The Sign in the Jam, and other stories
by championrolodexer
Summary: Sister Monica Joan argues with Sister Winifred over miraculous portents. Patsy's collection of Marlene Dietrich photographs is commented upon. Delia meets a little lamb. Proper car maintenance on a hot day is important. Barbara makes tea for Mrs Busby, but has she added enough milk? Exposure to Tom results in boredom. There's also a whale and a lot of tea.
1. The Sign in the Jam

**Chapter 1. The Sign in the Jam**

"Oooh, perhaps it's an optical illusion", ventures Barbara.

Sister Monica Joan is convinced the thing – the stain? – on the wall is some sort of ectoplasmic visitation. Or, at the very least, a portent of some variety. "Unless you people see a sign and wonders, you simply will not believe", she notes. And with that, she is off to the bookcase in search of further information on apparitions from the other side. That's probably not a subject area very well catered for by the Nonnatus House Library, Trixie thinks.

Trixie, on the other hand, isn't quite as convinced by explanations from optics or ectoplasm. Nurse Crane is right – it does have a distinctly masculine odour to it. And when Trixie stands rather closer to it, a few days later – standing back to watch Patsy bash the television set until the reception improves enough to make _Juke Box Jury_ visible (Patsy bashes the set with vigour, but not much obvious success), she takes a good sniff.

Trixie isn't stupid – far from it. Though perhaps it's sometimes convenient for people to think of her that way: as a girl who only thinks about her hair, and make-up, and whose knowledge only runs as far as the most recent article she read in her magazine. They see a pretty nurse (with an emphasis on the adjective and not the noun in that phrase), and a fashionable face. She likes fashion, of course. But why should a person be only one thing? That always struck her as rather reductive and rather – personally – insulting.

People think of her as a lightweight thing – an amuse-bouche, a dash of colour – who flits in and out of their lives with the latest information on the styles, trends and music. Most of the people who think of her like that, of course, forget that the brief comments she might make about styles, trends and music are actually delivered as an aside, a by-the-by, in the course of bringing a baby into this world, or assisting a frantic new mother, or administering an insulin injection.

The one person who really understood that – who understood that Trixie wasn't just an amuse-bouche – was Cynthia. Cynthia never treated her as just a frivolous thing, probably because she took the time to listen. Instead of assuming what Trixie wanted to talk about was fashion, or men, or music, Cynthia would furrow her brow and ask about something quite different. About a new medical treatment, or how Trixie had found this or that patient, or what Trixie thought about new plans to rehouse this or that family. And she waited to hear Trixie's response, as if she was waiting for Trixie's opinion before finally formulating her own. It wasn't always deeply serious – the stuff of the daily news headlines (except, sometimes, when it was) – but it was about things of importance. And Trixie enjoyed the feeling that she could persuade people – sometimes – to change their mind when it mattered.

Cynthia always said that one of Trixie's greatest skills was making hard, difficult things seem like light things. Of making painful conversations seem like they could be got through. Trixie's response had been to say that maybe that only meant she was flippant and incapable of taking thing seriously. Cynthia had fixed her with a very serious look and said – in that small, measured way of hers – that it was a great thing to be able to talk to someone and let them know that you were on their side, and to be able to show compassion without being solemn and grave. Solemnity can beat a person down, can cow people.

Trixie is not sure why she's thinking of this in the past tense. Cynthia – Sister Mary Cynthia – is still here. She's not gone anywhere.

* * *

Trixie isn't stupid. She recognises that 'masculine odour' – brylcreem. And, somewhere in the ectoplasmic residue, too, a distinctive (but modest) cologne. Well, it isn't difficult for her to work it out. Any doubts are set aside when Tom Hereward comes to offer some more spiritual advice to Sister Julienne on contraceptive matters, and he waits in the sitting room. Trixie, observing him almost dispassionately (really – she's happy for Barbara) observes that he looks far too nervous for a curate about to have a perfectly routine conversation with a nun. After a couple of days at Nonnatus House, none of the new nurses were really afraid of speaking to any of the sisters – their self-consciousness fell away, and the conversations became casual and pleasant. Tom, who should, she thinks, take at least some support from his position in the structure of the church, still seems a little unsure of himself. Maybe it's some delicate dance about how, exactly, curates relate to nuns – institutionally or otherwise.

Anyway. Trixie takes in his height, and then back to the - thing - on the wall. The measurement is just about right. The rest, she can imagine. She fills in a rough idea of how it might have got there. It is definitely not otherworldly.

Tom goes in to Sister Julienne's office. Sister Monica Joan and Sister Winifred emerge from the chapel, but do not appear calmed by their religious labours. It is another argument about the ectoplasm. Or, the non-ectoplasm, as Sister Winifred insists. Because to think of such things would be to run resolutely contrary to Christian belief.

"There are", Sister Monica Joan sniffs, "more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio".

"You surely don't mean the philosophy of the Anglican Church, do you, Sister?" intones Sister Winifred. And that rather puts an end to it.

* * *

There is yet another discussion of the contraceptive pill. Trixie is present for this one.

Delia is present, and impassioned – bursting with indignation, in fact. She becomes slightly more Welsh in her words the longer she speaks. Not that Trixie can disagree with anything she's saying.

Trixie thinks – she doesn't voice it – that there wouldn't be half so much fuss if this were a contraceptive pill aimed at men. When a medical innovation is discovered for men, it becomes a 'convenience', and everyone accepts without question that it should be stocked in hospitals and stores. If a device or a product is aimed at making women's life easier, it's only then that it becomes a moral issue, and people start worrying about the ethical dimensions of it.

Tom, who is here again, doesn't seem to want to venture an opinion to contradict Delia. If he has one. Spotting the brylcreem 'ectoplasm' on the wall, Trixie understands the cause of some of his hesitancy. It may not simply be because he is afraid of the Welshwoman's wrath. Though, if it is, she wouldn't really blame him, given that he lacks the courage even to stand up to Sister Julienne.

Delia is now talking about the fact that unmarried women are not eligible for the new pill. Sister Julienne purses her lips. Delia barrels on regardless.

"It seems stupid to me – really stupid – that we should be denying this pill to those who need it most. Of course it will make a difference to married women with families, and give them some measure of control – but isn't it the unmarried mothers, the very young ones, who have the greatest problems?"

"Problems which are not ours to solve, Nurse Busby. Problems which fall outside our medical jurisdiction as midwives", Sister Julienne comments.

"But – and excuse me sister, they are _ours_ , aren't they? Because what it really comes down to is a matter of health. Because the woman – well, the girl, really – who has a child at 16 or 17 – she doesn't really know how to look after it. She's not ready. And if she hasn't got a husband to support her and that child, or if the father won't do the right thing – and goodness knows, they don't often enough – then she has to find some way of supporting herself. And maybe that means she goes on the game, and later we have to treat her for syphilis, or she contracts something else. Or maybe it means she lives as cheaply as she can, in some squalid little place, and puts her own health in danger, or the health of her child, and then it's some sort of contagious disease, or malnutrition. It's absolutely Victorian. It's the sort of thing the National Health was meant to put an end to. It's a punishment for young women – and it _is_ a medical issue." Delia pauses, possibly remembering where she is, and whom she's speaking to, and hastily adds, "at least, in my opinion, it is".

It's a little like watching a steam train.

Sister Winifred enters only at the end of the discussion. She has, for the past few days, been providing short-term cover at the nearby primary school, after one of the teachers came down with chicken pox. Trixie suspects that Sister Winifred lingered rather longer than necessary at the end of classes today, in order to avoid the scheduled discussion. While the impassioned talk on the benefits of contraception continues, Sister Winifred makes her way towards the kitchen cupboards.

Sister Winifred declares herself famished after a day at the school – "the children are a joy, but it is such hard work to keep up with them at times! I have no idea where they get their energy".

Sister Monica Joan agrees with the sentiment, and joins her at the table, setting out some scones (and jam, and butter: should anyone ask if the two are really both needed, she will make an appeal to her age and her blood sugar).

Sister Winifred has spread the jam on half a scone and is about to take a rather large bite (in fact, a very large bite for such a small nun), when Sister Monica Joan pulls at her wrist.

"Sister!" she exclaims "You must forebear!"

Sister Winifred looks puzzled.

Sister Monica Joan stands, and moves over to her, and – quite forcefully, given the fragility of her own hands – compels Sister Winifred's hand (still grasping the jammy scone) down to the plate.

"Observe, Sister. Do you not see – can you not make out – the face of St Raymond Nonnatus in that blob of jam? No – you must not touch it: we must set it aside and ask Mr Hereward to inspect it. Its meaning may be of great significance. Perhaps St Raymond Nonnatus himself feels called upon to intervene in this debate about the arts of contraception."

Mr Hereward, hearing his name being called, moves towards the kitchen table and turns his head to one side, then the other, in a fashion which could politely be described as 'non-committal'.

Sister Monica Joan polishes off the last scone while the inspection of the Sign in the Jam takes place. Trixie strongly – very strongly – suspects that Sister Monica Joan sees nothing in the jam at all, other than a means of antagonising Sister Winifred.

Trixie steps over to take a look at the scone for herself (catching quite a whiff of Tom's brylcreem as she does so – really, how could anyone else not have noticed?).

"I'm not sure about St Raymond Nonnatus, Sister", she says, looking at Sister Monica Joan as she wipes the crumbs from around her face. "It seems to have a distinctly demonic aspect to me. I'd be very wary of eating it, even if I were starved after a whole day of Keep Fit".

* * *

Later that evening, Trixie and Patsy are both in their room.

"Delia seemed to have a lot to say about the contraceptive pill."

"Yes, she's awfully passionate about these things. One of her best qualities."

Patsy silently curses herself for a comment and an intonation that possibly sounds as if it goes beyond friendly admiration.

"Yes, I've noticed, but this seemed rather… more than that?"

Patsy looks perplexed. "How do you mean?"

"Well, I thought that perhaps she might be _personally_ invested in the argument."

"I'm sorry, I'm not following you, Trix."

"Oh, come on Patsy! She's stepping out with someone – someone at the hospital."

"At the hospital?" Patsy scoffs. "Some ancient consultant or some insufferable junior doctor who thinks he's god's gift to the world of medicine?"

"Hm, well, perhaps that's not her type."

Patsy says nothing.

"Patsy, I know she's your friend – she's my friend too. I'm only speculating. Lovingly, I might add. I'd ask her outright if she were here."

"I just don't see it, I'm afraid. She's never mentioned anyone."

Trixie tries again.

"Well, so not a doctor. Perhaps – perhaps a young man from Wales. Perhaps someone who's come down from the Valleys to London to make his fortune."

"You're making him sound like Dick Whittington."

"As I recall, he only had a cat, not a girlfriend."

Patsy exhales, stubs out her cigarette, and thinks about lighting another. Delia would like her to give up. But the subject of Delia, tonight, is what's driving her to think longingly about another drag.

Trixie continues. "And I doubt he has time for a cat. He's probably… a very passionate public speaker. Yes, I bet he's the kind to go to all sorts of political meetings. Maybe he aspires to be a councillor. And by day, he works in some sort of office. The well-educated type – she's always reading."

Patsy, sitting in her blue and white pyjamas, sighs glumly. Trixie can't take much more – this really is becoming quite ridiculous. She is impatient.

One last try.

"But, actually, thinking about it, I think I'm entirely wrong about her type."

Patsy raises an eyebrow. This really is a very one-sided conversation.

"Yes?"

"Oh yes. The more I think about it, the more I think her type is probably… tall. Yes, that would make sense. As a couple, that would look right. Tall. And, with Delia's complexion being what it is – dark hair, and those eyes—"

Patsy is about to specify Delia's eye colour – or, rather, launch into a short disquisition on exactly how the colour of her eyes change throughout the course of the day – when she catches herself.

Patsy, clearly, still does not see where this is going. Trixie marvels at the fact that Patsy ever manages to diagnose any patients at all if she is always quite this slow on the uptake. If Sister Monica Joan sees signs all around, then, by contrast, Patsy is apparently blind to even the bluntest of hints. Trixie presses on.

"So, given Delia's complexion, they should be blonde, or, possibly, a red head. And, well, I think Delia's far too practical to be mooning over any sort of long-distance romance. So they'd have to live locally. Ideally, I mean, here in Poplar. And if it can't be a doctor, then it would have to be someone who does something medical – because she'll be after someone to discuss those things with."

Patsy does notice the switch from the masculine pronoun to the ambiguous "they" and "someone". And then, with a slow blink, takes in the content of Trixie's list for Delia's ideal man.

And she looks at Trixie – not quite as blankly as before. And the glumness on her face from talk of Delia's suitors has been replaced with… something quite different.

"Oh, come on sweetie. Surely you know that I know. And surely you also know that it doesn't matter a wink to me." Trixie smiles, and holds out her cigarette to Patsy. Patsy pauses, then accepts it, taking a long drag.

"Was it…"

"Obvious? Yes. To me, at least. Not to anyone else, I shouldn't think."

"What was it – I mean, how did you know?"

"Apart from the look of sheer unadulterated lust that Delia gave you last time you came to Keep Fit in a leotard? Had any man given me such a look, I would have absolutely melted on the spot. Or, slapped him in the face, quite possibly."

"Oh."

"Delia mustn't take all the blame though. There's quite an array of Marlene Dietrich pictures above your bed, Patsy. Hardly subtle. Of course I worked out what it meant. I notice these things."

"I did mean – I wished I could tell you. But, you know, it's hard. More than hard. Impossible sometimes."

"I bet. But you needn't worry about me making it hard for you."

"If Delia weren't on a night shift, I'd suggest calling her into the room. I think she'd probably have more to say than me."

"Don't be ridiculous. You may not be as _forthcoming_ as Delia – I don't think that's your nature – but now you're done with this charade we can have a perfectly human conversation about these things."

Patsy smiles. "Yes. Yes, of course."

"Because we are friends, Patsy. I know there are things in our lives which neither of us likes to talk about. But that probably means we ought to talk about them more, not less."

"The talking cure… has never really held much appeal, I'll admit."

"Well, that aside. More importantly, now you can stop your pretence of being interested in men – although I can't say you really put that much effort into it, most of the time – we can concentrate our efforts on finding an eligible bachelor for me. I must say I rather liked the look of Mrs Quinn's cousin – until he started talking endlessly about the Rotary Club as I was trying to deliver the maternity pack."

"Be careful what you say – I hear he's a very powerful man. In Rotary Club circles, at least."

And the conversation becomes light again.

* * *

 _A/N: Sister Monica Joan's line: "Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will never believe" is a reference to John 4:48. Mainly because I rather like the idea of SMJ grumpily paraphrasing an irritated Christ.  
_


	2. Delia Busby and the Little Lamb

**Chapter 2. The Tale of Delia Busby and the Little Lamb**

There's a boy at the door with a box. He asks for the "old one". Delia debates, internally, whether it is worth the trouble of explaining to him that this is not really an appropriate form of address. She decides – experience with the Scouts informing her – that it won't make much difference. She recalls the same truism applied to her own childhood – if mam told her not to do something, it would only make her want to do it more. That still holds true, in fact. Although now being contrary is only the beginning of it.

Delia calls for Sister Monica Joan, who comes to the door, and takes the boy down the steps into the garden outside Nonnatus House. She thinks she sees the flash of a coin being pressed into his hand.

Delia doesn't think of the boy at the door again, until she is lying on her bed, reading her book (well, reading in fits and starts, but mainly waiting for Patsy to be finished in the bathroom, so they can go out for lunch) when the doorbell rings for the fourth or fifth time that morning. That's not necessarily surprising, in a house full of midwives and nuns. People seek medical attention – and spiritual attention, come to that – at all times of the day. Perhaps there's just been a rush on today. On the previous few occasions, someone else, downstairs, has answered the door. Someone else does so again.

* * *

At lunch, Delia tries to worm out of Patsy what she'd like for her birthday. Delia is, actually, very good at buying presents - for most people. The problem with Patsy is that she doesn't want anything. "Just you", she says softly, and squeezes Delia's hand. Which is very romantic, of course, but utterly unhelpful. The problem is that Patsy is one of those people who absolutely means it when she says she doesn't want anything, and that she has everything she wants. And Delia knows that, whatever she gets for her, Patsy will be grateful – but, after this past year, that's not really enough. She wants to do something more impressive, something meaningful. But there are limits on how creative one can be when living in a house full of nuns.

* * *

Coming home, they're just about to walk up the steps to Nonnatus House when Patsy is accosted by a patient (she's not dressed in uniform, so perhaps Delia, possessive for a moment, does resent the interruption slightly). And Delia notices that the door to Fred's shed has been left ajar. She leaves Patsy to deal with whatever crisis this is. As far as she can make out, it's a complaint about the way in which the one of the "other nurses" at the Maternity Clinic mocked the efficacy of her homeopathic remedies. Delia would put money on this being Nurse Crane – that is, if Delia didn't come from a family of Non-Conformists who'd made her sign a pledge against the evils of gambling at the age of twelve.

Delia goes to shut the door. Fred's not working at Nonnatus House today and – risk of theft aside – some of the things he keeps in that shed are probably a bit too poisonous to be so easily accessible when children are around.

Inside, she finds Sister Monica Joan sitting in Fred's chair, looking into a shoebox. Sister Monica Joan looks up to acknowledge Delia's presence, but does so only with a nod. She turns back to the shoebox. "Little lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee?" She picks the item out of the box and places it on her lap.

Delia decides not to mention that the Little Lamb is in fact a large London brown rat. Sister Monica Joan is probably quite aware of this fact, given that she's stroking Little Lamb. She does, however, ask Sister Monica Joan – in the kindest, most even tone she can manage – what she's doing.

"We are the Rats Protection League." Sister Monica Joan states this as if it is staggeringly obvious. Delia doesn't address the royal 'we' in that sentence. Not the time.

What she does address – and what she does get to the bottom of – is that Sister Monica Joan has let it be known that she will exchange rats for cash. Live rats only. The children of Poplar have been invited to deliver them to Nonnatus House – in boxes, for the rat's wellbeing is paramount, of course – and to ask for her. This cannot possibly end well.

Obviously, she fetches Patsy. Not because Delia is squeamish about rats – far from it – but because she thinks she will need moral support. And Patsy has the advantage of height, which gives her a more commanding air. Especially useful when trying to separate Sister Monica Joan from her rats.

* * *

There is a point at which, rather than being horrified (as Delia had expected), Patsy does that thing where her mouth makes a sort of lopsided smile, contorts with support and understanding, and looks rather...well, sympathetic. Sympathetic towards the rats, not Delia.

Of the many scenarios which she's envisioned for her future with Patsy (and, really, she'd be happy to take any one of them), none of them included the two of them running a Rat Shop together. It is probably best to make this absolutely clear now. Delia has, admittedly, long been aware that her inclinations leaned towards what her mother would call "unnatural" or "unconventional". But she did not envisage this specific kind of unrespectability marking her life – the kind stemming from rats. Possibly, though, the hygiene implications of the scene she now looks upon, would scandalise her mother a great deal more than her relationship with Patsy.

This isn't like Patsy though. Patsy _is_ hygiene. Patsy understands that rats carry disease. This is Patsy, who, throughout their time together on the ward, would refuse to sneak off early to Delia's room (despite the many irresistible inducements Delia had offered) until she was completely satisfied with the cleanliness of her hospital station. This is Nurse Mount, the only person whom Delia ever – _ever_ – heard Matron Williams commend for her attention to detail in matters of public health.

(Briefly, Delia entertains the thought that matters of scrubbing and cleaning would actually be a topic on which Patsy and her mother would be much in agreement. But it is much too late to reattempt that introduction.)

She drags Patsy out of the shed.

"You did _see_ the rats? The kind of big brown plague rats which I don't think the English habitually keep as pets? Rats which we should probably remove from Sister Monica Joan?"

"Yes. It's… not ideal."

"Pats, she's establishing a rat colony. I'm not quite sure why you seem so calm. We obviously need to remove them from her."

"Yes. We do." That last is a very measured observation.

"I can't believe I have to ask this –". Delia takes a deep breath. "Do you have some sort of particular fondness for rats, which you should probably tell me about right this minute?"

"No" (quite emphatic). "No" (more convincing). "Just - only, last year, we had quite a plague of them in Poplar, and Fred was putting down poison. And no-one wanted them anywhere, and it was decided that they should be scourged from the neighbourhood, or driven into the sea, or something similar. And Sister Monica Joan was talking about protecting them from culls, and protecting and loving all god's creatures. It seemed a sort of metaphor for us. For queers, I mean. It was quite touching, actually. Sister Monica Joan _contra mundum_."

First, Delia notes, she's a bit proud that Patsy managed to say all that out loud, and so stridently. Normally – or, at least, a while ago – Patsy would only have said "people like us", or "women like us", and left it as ambiguous as that. It's not a nice word, but Delia decided, a long time ago, not to be afraid of words. (Besides, English words are fey and half-hearted things, much less frightening than big tough Welsh ones.) But this is new in Patsy. Delia won't, however, allow herself a smile, because –

Second: really? Patsy is talking about allowing a colony of rats to be established in the garden of a convent, but Delia is apparently the one recovering from the very serious head injury?

"Pats. Pats – no. I absolutely refuse to be a rat. Why is a rat a metaphor for me? What do I have in common with a rat? – And if you dare say my beady eyes, know that I won't talk to you for at least a month."

Patsy sighs. "I suppose I just thought – all creatures great and small, the Lord God made them all."

"Yes, All Things Bright and Beautiful and so on. There's something to that, but it is not the appropriate hymn for today, Pats! Just because I don't want to see them wiped off the face of the Earth does not mean we can allow Sister Monica Joan to open up some kind of rat sanctuary here in Poplar."

"You're right, of course."

"Not to think who'd be responsible if one took a nip out of a newborn."

This – more or less – seems to convince Patsy.

* * *

Once persuaded that the rats can no longer live in the shed (and that is not easy), Sister Monica Joan's plan is to take the rats on the bus (boxed, Delia presumes), to a greener part of the world and release them there. Delia doesn't do that, of course. She does think about making Fred promise to dispose of them humanely. Poison, in her view, is not humane. But there are only two, including "Little Lamb". The other two boxes they find in the shed contain only dead rats – she has Fred burn those. And, after handing the dead ones over, she has no appetite for much else, so they surreptitiously release them. Two more rats running round Poplar – in the grand scheme of things, she thinks, that is probably excusable. Matron Williams would surely have disagreed with that sentiment. Matron Williams, though, was content to live out her life on Male Surgical, so Delia will not look to her for any sort of advice on how she should act or how she should be.

If questioned, Delia will resolutely deny that she was in any way moved by what Patsy said about rats and culls and queers.

Delia also makes sure, for the rest of the afternoon – until the message has spread around Sister Monica Joan's nascent "rat network" – that she is the one to answer the door, and to turn away any suspicious-looking parcels.

* * *

And now it is evening, and the sounds of Compline are drifting upstairs. Delia is lying with her head on Patsy's chest. Patsy is dressed for midwifery, and will probably have to leave soon. Delia doesn't move about too much, out of consideration for creasing Patsy's uniform.

"You are strange sometimes, Pats. Taking pity on rats."

"Well, so did you, in the end."

"That is because I'm very easily led, and just as easily persuaded."

"You shouldn't tell me that, you know. It gives me entirely too much power over you." Patsy's eyes flash as she yawns and stretches.

"Mmm." Delia entwines their hands together. "But now I know that the way to your heart is through a rat. And it _is_ your birthday very soon."

* * *

 _A/N: "Little Lamb, who made thee?" is, of course, the first line of the William Blake poem The Lamb. I wish I could say that this was written entirely out of love for William Blake, rather than as a pathetic play on the Delia Busby-Kate Lamb connection. But I can't._


	3. Motorcar Maintenance

**Chapter 3. Phyllis Crane and the Art of Motorcar Maintenance**

"Now girls, motorcar maintenance and obstetrics have one very important thing in common", begins Nurse Crane. "Which is that men like to poke around in there and think themselves experts, but really", she grunts as she tugs on something which seems caught around the engine, "they're both jobs which are better left to women".

Whatever it is that had been caught around the engine comes away. It looks like a small black rag.

Fred, who is tending to the vegetable patch, hears this comment and harrumphs. But he knows better than to say anything – he and Nurse Crane had this one out earlier in the day, after he offered her "a spot of tinkering to clean up the old works".

Nurse Crane responded with the sort of look that would have seen off any German invasion.

"Fred, while I would trust you implicitly with any bicycle, the Morris is, and will remain, my domain."

So that was that. Nurse Crane is planning – in her week off – to make a trip to Scotland. Go in the height of summer to beat the midges, she explains. She will be staying with a friend who works in a small cottage hospital on the Isle of Skye – "a nurse of all trades". She has spoken at length in praise of the pure and clean highland air, quite a contrast with the smoky mugginess of Poplar, especially in midsummer. Sister Winifred sighed softly at that, remembering, perhaps, a childhood of summers somewhere on the border between Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

Patsy had continued smoking throughout the conversation. She's not convinced by the rural idyll. There are certain advantages to city life. If she has to take the greyness of the buildings and the coughs in winter, then that's probably a fair trade-off for the anonymity the city can offer to the people who most value it.

Now, as Nurse Crane sets about her motorcar maintenance, Patsy and Trixie are reclining in deckchairs. The sun is so warm that the reclining threatens to become something of a sprawl, if they're out here for much longer. Patsy is still in her uniform. It had been a long night – and both she and Trixie had ended up attending on Mrs Hurst, the nervous type, whose nerves hadn't been improved much when it transpired that the second twin was presenting as breach. Mr Hurst, on the other hand, had found the whole thing rather jolly, but had come back from the pub a little too early, and had blanched when Trixie explained to him exactly what "breach" meant. He'd got whiter still when Trixie made it clear he should be taking things a little more seriously. The drunken cheer had rapidly worn off – the stench of the pub hadn't.

So deckchairs and ice-creams are the order of the day. Barbara had been sent off to fetch them. In fact, Barbara had volunteered to fetch them, being, first, fresh from a full night of sleep, and, secondly and more importantly, concerned that the right decisions be made if it came to a choice of flavours.

Patsy fears that she probably isn't getting the full benefit of Nurse Crane's engineering insights. Which is not her fault, really. It is absolutely not her fault that, on hearing Nurse Crane's earlier conversation with Fred about the "tune up", Delia had volunteered to act as an assistant mechanic. Apparently she'd had a cousin who owned a petrol garage in Pembrokeshire (Patsy had rolled her eyes at hearing about another in Delia's ever-growing and appparently endless list of Welsh cousins).

"Those small hands will be useful", Nurse Crane had commented, approvingly. And that, apparently, was how Delia had landed her second job as a mechanic. Or "apprentice technician" as Nurse Crane deemed her.

But…gosh. It wasn't fair.

It absolutely wasn't fair to make her sit here, still dusty and dirty from a night's work, the sun's heat on her neck becoming increasingly unbearable, on what was definitely the hottest morning of the year so far, but unable to move, because there in front of her was Delia Busby, in a shirt (sleeves rolled up almost to her elbows) and slacks, leaning over an engine.

Where was that shirt from? Patsy reminded herself to ask later. The slacks were, probably, she thought, Barbara's. One of Barbara's "liberation purchases" that she'd allowed herself after arriving from Liverpool. It seemed that Liverpudlians had extraordinarily strong scruples about clergymen's daughters wearing trousers. Or perhaps that had just been Barbara's father. It would be wrong to condemn a city on unverified information.

And, goodness, the muscle. Patsy hadn't realised this was her thing. Well, obviously, she liked every last little bit of Delia, but she hadn't thought about the shape that her muscle gave to her arms. Not in the abstract. It was not the obvious, burly muscle, in the style of the man who banged the gong before Rank films. This was lean muscle, well-proportioned, straining with strength. Not rippling, but, really, very nice indeed. It was fitted to Delia's skin, skin which was looking both rather golden and slightly pink from all this motorcar maintenance. There was as much muscular magnificence on display here, in a backstreet of the East End, as you'd see in any exhibition at the British Museum. It was rather better than the British Museum, actually. Far more interesting. Probably less decent.

Patsy was surprised that she hadn't noticed it before, in any setting – intimate or communal. Surely this was the sort of thing which would be impossible not to notice when Delia reached over to pass the piccalilli at meal times. Yet this was one part of Delia's anatomy she'd entirely forgotten to admire.

She was making up for that now, of course. And it wasn't yet 11 o'clock.

"Penny for your thoughts?" said Trixie, sternly. Trixie said this in a voice – and accompanied it with such a formidable gaze – that it was very clear that Trixie knew exactly what, or who, Patsy was thinking of. Trixie raised her eyebrows in a reminder that despite the heat of the day, and the length of the night before it, Patsy ought to remember to maintain at least a modicum of control.

It is midsummer in Poplar, and it is not yet 11 o'clock, and the heat is spreading across Patsy's face and oher parts. She decides to take decisive action, and announces to the world in general: "It's getting quite warm. I think I'll just pop indoors and splash some cold water on my face".

"I'm not sure there's enough cold water in the whole of Poplar", Trixie responded, under her breath.

* * *

Patsy returns, cooled. She's changed into something a little less restrictive.

Delia is asking a question about the ignition coil.

They've now been joined by Sister Winifred and Tom Hereward, who aren't sitting down, but are deep in conversation. Tom doesn't look like he's enjoying himself.

Barbara still isn't back. They might begin to worry, only Patsy knows from experience exactly how long Barbara is capable of spending in a sweetshop, when such critical decisions are involved. The same probably holds true for ice-cream.

Patsy sprawls back into the deckchair, and Trixie – who has been flicking through a magazine, but definitely not one about engineering supplies – gives her the quick once-over. Trixie decides that Patsy seems acceptably cooled down.

Delia is still in her shirt sleeves. Fortunately, before Patsy can follow that train of thought again, back to the wholly inappropriate places it will lead her, the conversation between Tom and Sister Winifred becomes louder, and slightly more ill-tempered.

"But Mr Hereward, these are themes unsuitable for children to be reading about."

"I understand your concern, Sister, but these are young people of 15 and 16, and not, strictly speaking, children."

Patsy realises that what they are discussing is the subject which has animated Sister Winifred's conversation all week. The sister had discovered (mentioned, in passing, by Timothy Turner) that some of the older children in the grammar school had been set _To Kill A Mockingbird_ as part of their summer reading.

Sister Winifred has not read the book, but this has not prevented her from forming a strong opinion about it, based upon reports of its content. She has also taken the precautionary measure of checking out all three remaining copies from the local library, now keeping them in protective custody in her room.

"Still – to be reading about racial conflict, and violence, and, I was even told, lynchings."

Tom Hereward spreads his palms in what Patsy supposes is intended as a pacific gesture. "Terrible things, but things which they may one day be forced to encounter in the world. Some people would say it is safer for them to learn about it now."

"But can we be quite sure it _is_ safe for children to be reading about this, without any supervision?"

"It has won a Pulitzer Prize."

Sister Winifred does not look reassured by this.

"There at least ought to be some sort of moral guidance in place, don't you think? Perhaps you might have a word with the school – I'd be happy to accompany you, of course – just to check that any reading is being properly monitored."

"I'm not really sure that it's my place to intervene in the grammar school's curriculum."

Neither Patsy, nor Trixie want to be drawn into a discussion of the relationship between the church's pastoral mission and the grammar school system. Nurse Crane probably has an opinion, but is too busy pointing out an important mechanical point to Delia, both of them leaning over the bonnet.

Delia, Patsy notes, has a smudge of grease perfectly placed on her right cheek. Although it looks very fetching, Patsy's mind has already set about thinking of the myriad ways in which she might help Delia removed it later. But – no. It's still only quarter past eleven. Patsy grits her teeth and returns to the great _To Kill A Mockingbird_ debate.

Sister Monica Joan, has, until this point, been occupying the third deckchair, but silently snoozing, a large white handkerchief placed across her face (because "the rays of helios are relentless at this juncture in the solar cycle"). Only, she apparently hasn't been snoozing, but listening. She snatches the handkerchief away, and her face comes into view.

"Your noisy conversation about this book touches me."

Sister Winifred looks wary.

Sister Monica Joan continues. "The authoress once lived in Poplar. I believe I attended her once, during a bout of the Spanish 'Flu. A most convivial patient."

"She's an American, sister – the book is set in America."

"And yet, still I say that I have met her."

"Oh, I don't think you could have, sister – she's a notorious recluse."

"Which explains, does it not, why you were not aware of her living in Poplar." Sister Monica Joan snorts. She apparently finds conversation with Sister Winifred more draining than exposure to the sun's rays. She reaches below her deckchair, picks up a copy of a book and starts to read it. She is hunched over it, the book's title and cover concealed in the folds of her habit.

Sister Winifred is alert.

"Sister – what book is it you're reading?"

Patsy rolls her eyes. Undoubtedly Sister Monica Joan has come across (more accurately, "rootled out", or, more accurately still, "purloined") one of Sister Winifred's confiscated copies of _To Kill A Mockingbird_ , and is now deliberately flaunting it. Which is, all things considered, quite an effective way to annoy Sister Winifred.

But Patsy is wrong. Sister Monica Joan is many things, but she is never predictable.

"You need have no fear – I am not reading the book which you accuse of spreading moral contagion. Our house shall not be a plague house of moral decrepitude."

With that, Sister Monica Joan looks up sharply, and slowly turns the cover of the book towards Sister Winifred.

It is _Lady Chatterley's Lover_.

And at that moment, Barbara appears, brightly, with the ice creams.

* * *

One, or perhaps two years later, an envelope is left on the Nonnatus House dining table, addressed to Sister Winifred. Inside is a ticket to see the film adaptation of _To Kill A Mockingbird._ Sister Winifred uses it - reasoning it would be waste not to. When she returns from the cinema, her smile verges on the beatific. She declares that Gregory Peck has quite won her over.

* * *

 _A/N: In case that penultimate section doesn't make sense (for reasons other than poor composition): Lady Chatterley's Lover, written in 1928, wasn't published in England until 1960, due to our restrictive obscenity laws (it contains lots of swearing and sex, which could so easily warp our delicate English minds). When Penguin did publish it, they were taken to court in November 1960 - the publishers eventually won, but not before generating a great deal of conversation about the moral decay of the country. So that's the context for what SMJ is reading._


	4. A Pageant of History

**Chapter 4. A Pageant of History**

Timothy Turner is destined to be a doctor. He's bright enough, with more than enough interest in science, and sensitive to the small technological advances that improve lives. At Christmas, taking a break from providing the accompaniment in rehearsals for the Poplar Nativity Play, he spent twenty minutes discussing the world's first heart transplant with Sister Mary Cynthia. The transplant patient had been canine, but he speculates that it won't be long until the operation is attempted on a human. Timothy Turner seems destined to be a doctor - besides, he was practically read _The Lancet_ in utero.

On a related note, Timothy Turner is failing his history classes. Dead people are for coroners and historians, not doctors. Tim is bright enough but dates don't hold much lure. Especially the way it's taught at the grammar school. The teacher is one of those who got a special pass, immediately after the war, for forces veterans in search of new employment. It was a time when new schools were springing up and many classrooms were in desperate want of a teacher. It's been more than a decade and a half since recruitment into the teaching profession, but he's not received anything more than the basic training of 1946. And he still treats learning as waging a kind of war. A phalanx of dates and events pressing forward across exercise books.

Mrs Turner mentions all this at dinner. The subject comes up casually enough, but there's a pressure in her voice which makes her concern evident. Tim seems quite resistant to discussing it with his father. She's not sure if it's pride or shame - though they're really two sides of the same coin.

To everyone's surprise, Delia volunteers her services. Before being asked, she offers up her qualifications. She won the history medal for Pembroke at 16 (no, not just Welsh history - it was Robin Hood and the Spanish Armada and all that, etc, etc). Recognised as the best student in the school - in the county in fact. A medal, complete with presentation case, was awarded to her by the Lord Mayor, and is still kept on the mantlepiece at home. Mam and Dad were ever so proud, and took her out for a cream tea as a special treat afterwards. She blushes a little when recounting this.

So that's decided.

Later, Delia brings down her books and arranges them on the kitchen table. Some she's brought with her from Wales, others collected and borrowed from the great and the good of Poplar in the course of an afternoon. Patsy thinks she also catches sight of a lesson plan, in Delia's small neat writing.

"Not just a pretty face, eh?", says Delia, smiling at Patsy's interest.

"I was actually going to say that you're smarter than you look."

"Careful, you. I shall take offence - like the French in 1805. And my military powers are vastly superior."

"Show off."

Tim comes in. He'd elected to have the lessons at Nonnatus House, rather than at home. Parents can sometimes be too attentive. Patsy decides to makes herself scarce. Trixie comes in and takes a biscuit from the surprisingly well-stocked tin before retiring.

"Delia", she warns, "don't you dare give him the Welsh version of history".

"Not to worry, I shan't go on about the wickedness of the English invader all the time."

* * *

This is a difficult week to be a midwife in Poplar. Three women are fit to pop - one with triplets - in the same week. Fit to pop is probably the term most appropriate at this stage, as it's now a matter of chance and waiting rather than obstetric expertise. But they happen to be the three most difficult women on the Nonnatus House books. One has a sister who works as a receptionist at a GP's surgery in Chelmsford. Needless to say, she considers herself very up upon the relative merits of different maternity procedures, and discusses these at every home visit. The second woman is the triplets case - never easy - but this mother refuses to go into the maternity home after a bad experience on the previous go. "We must serve as we are called", observes Sister Julienne mildly, and makes a note in the book. The third of the difficult cases is just, well, difficult. She doesn't think the midwives call round enough. There are too many rings before someone at Nonnatus House answers the telephone. She's not getting much out of the National Health compared to what her Ralph is putting in every week with his payments to the National Insurance and so on.

Patsy has sprained her wrist in an altogether too enthusiastic attempt to teach some of the scouts how to play badminton. It hurts a surprising amount. Delia has promised to kiss it better. It's an unorthodox medical technique, which has not yet shown much sign of success.

The sprain is serious enough for Patsy to be confined to light general duties for a week. And to be offered lifts from Nurse Crane to save her traipsing around the East End while her bicycle is off limits (all at Nonnatus House now take bicycle safety very seriously indeed, for obvious reasons). Barbara, who would normally be very sympathetic, looks slightly jealous. She's all set for a week of "martyrdom by midwifery".

Delia tries to think of famous historical figures who have gone into battle with sprained wrists. The best she can do is Nelson's amputated right arm.

* * *

It gets worse. Mrs Turner - suddenly interested in history to an extent that puts a pained expression on Tim's face - has an idea, which Sister Julienne approves before anyone else has a chance to voice their reasonable objections: A Pageant of History With The Children of Poplar. Trixie almost buries her head in her hands when the title is announced. "We're midwives, not travelling players", she complains - but only from the safety of her room.

Barbara is put in charge of the Pageant. Tom looks fondly grateful for her "volunteering". Barbara talks about how she's organised this kind of thing before in Liverpool. On a smaller scale. Without the involvement of a Scout troupe. And without the historical element or the costume requirement. But surely it's very like a Harvest Festival, other than all those things. "God love you for trying", says Nurse Crane.

Patsy and Trixie come in one evening, still laughing, from the film they'd seen. Since finding out about - well, announcing her awareness of - Patsy and Delia, Trixie has been quite deliberate about scheduling more time with Patsy. Things are easier. There's a certain irony in the fact that the thing that Patsy feared most (discovery) has actually strengthened their friendship. Patsy and Trixie are strikingly similar. Both agree that a problem shared is not really a problem halved. There's no truth in that. But fear of people finding out these things can gnaw away at your soul. And maybe both of them realise that if - constitutionally - they're not built to be emotionally forthright, then they can at least be honest with one another. Perhaps the thing that makes that easier is that they both dislike disclosing things about themselves. Talking - just openly talking - about personal histories can make you feel like a small slice of you is being offered up to be devoured.

"Maybe this is what it feels like to visit the confessional", Trixie wonders, after telling Patsy about that first visit to Alcoholics Anonymous, and how she summonded up the courage to walk through the door. "No wonder Catholics get such a kick out of it."

Patsy curses herself - and her selfishness, really - for spending a whole winter not thinking about her friend. She makes to apologise.

"Water under the bridge", says Trixie. "Water and wine under the bridge."

They trip into the sitting room and find Barbara, who asks what film they decided on seeing in the end. They'd been deliberating between a number of options before setting off.

" _Dr No_. It was dire. Men running round with guns. No story to it." Patsy's expression is grim.

"And no romance to speak of either", Trixie supplements. "Just scantily-clad women purring at a rather unimpressive man. And I thought spies were meant to be dashing! Not at all convincing. Jamaica looked rather nice, though."

"The main character - what was his name? John Bond?" Patsy can't remember.

"James", supplies Trixie.

"Yes - James Bond - awfully dull."

"Was it", Barbara offers, "so bad that it took Patsy's mind off her wrist?"

"Possibly."

Trixie thinks that Ursula Andress also took Patsy's mind off her wrist. She's wrong - absolutely not Patsy's type. Too...obvious.

Their focus turns from espionage to the more mundane. Specifically, to the question of what on earth Barbara is doing. Barbara is lying on the floor, flicking through a pile of...almanacs? No, history books. Veritable tomes, very much of the "what happened when" school of learning. None of them has a publication date later than the 1890s. Barbara's furious reading has created a little cloud of dust in the air.

"I'm trying", Barbara explains, "to find something significant that happened in England in 1062. Or 1162. Or 1262. Or - well, you see. So we can have a theme. From 1962 to something-62. Only it would be so much easier if this year was 1966. Then we could just pick 1066 and The Norman Conquest and we'd be all set for a theme."

"I thought history was the theme?", said Trixie dryly.

"Tom thought we should have something more specific. To help with the costumes."

Patsy rolls her eyes.

* * *

History is enough of a theme, in the end. This decision might just spare Barbara from tearing out her hair. She has spent half the night before the pageant delivering triplets.

Patsy and Trixie make it late to the hall for the pre-pageant rehearsal, where costumes are being prepared and hurriedly adjusted. Almost as soon as they enter, they encounter three small girls crying. Their accounts are incomprehensible.

Trixie looks to Barbara, who is just about managing to keep things from degenerating into all out war between those chosen as representatives of "past" and those nominated to portray "the present". The families of the children representing modern times must have had easier jobs in assembling their outfits. Although Patsy smiles at the one little chap who's dressed up as Harold Macmillan.

Barbara - holding two halves of a broken toy boat in hand, which, when whole, had been intended to represent The British Navy - looks panicked. The look of panic turns to guilt at the sight of the trio of weeping children. "Well, by the time they turned up, we already had a Joan of Arc and a Bodicea and an Elizabeth I and a Queen Victoria. And when I said those were all taken, they started crying. So I said they could represent... some famous ladies from history. But perhaps ones who hadn't been written about very much."

Patsy takes action. She gathers a handful of tissues and then marches the three girls over to the craft corner (although craft is really spilling out all over the hall at this point, so the delineation of a corner is somewhat redundant). She fashions - sprained wrist notwithstanding - some armour and crowns from cardboard and tinfoil, and returns with Richard the Lionheart, William the Conqueror and Wicked King Richard III. The smallest girl's doll serves as a substitute for the little nephew whom Wicked Richard plans to murder. As it turns out, girls are quite the equal of boys - especially when it comes to usurping medieval thrones.

Trixie decided long ago that she would not participate in the pageant. There's a line that one must draw somewhere when it comes to Sister Julienne's requests. Instead she'll be the judge of the best costume. Before it begins she announces she will be looking for "accuracy and artistry". There's a barley sugar for everyone who takes part.

Delia arrives at the hall just before the pageant starts, a little breathless, carrying a a tricoleur sash which is fraying at the seams.

"What's this then?", Patsy asks.

"Well, if you're Nelson and his useless right arm, I've decided to accompany you as France, your old enemy." Delia pulls the sash over her head. Only Delia could have seized upon such a moth-eaten old relic with such relish. Only Delia could have found such a thing.

"Charmed, I'm sure." Patsy inclines her head in the manner of a clipped bow. Delia mimics a small curtsey.

Then Delia scurries to the back of the hall, looking for something she had hidden earlier. And returns in triumph, flourishing a tricorn hat. She stands on tiptoe, and her reach just about extends far enough to allow her to position the hat atop Patsy's head. It doesn't really match the green of Patsy's Scout uniform.

"I don't think we'll win, somehow. Even if the judge is your roommate."

"Can you hum the Marseillaise, darling? We might get points for effort."

La France takes Nelson's useless right arm.

* * *

At the start of the new school year, Tim acquits himself decently in his first history composition. He's not top of the class, but he does well enough. His group have been moved on to a different teacher, though he still doesn't particularly enjoy the subject. Delia doesn't get him a medal, but does buy him a book entitled: 'A History of Infectious Diseases in the British Isles: From The Black Death to Influenza'. Tim had protested taking part in the pageant - he's a young man in long trousers now, too old for fancy dress competitions, and prizes are only for little children. Still, Delia's gift takes pride of place on his bookshelf.


	5. The Countdown

**Chapter 5. The Countdown (or, The Wet Flannel)**

At the beginning of March, Sister Mary Cynthia, Nurse Crane, Barbara and Sister Monica Joan are downstairs for an ordinary breakfast. Sister Julienne presides at the head of the table, as usual. It is an ordinary kind of spring day, with the ordinary assembly of toast and cereal spread out before them.

"Fourteen", says Sister Monica Joan. The utterance is more cryptic than usual.

Sister Mary Cynthia, sitting next to her this morning, thinks she's misheard - being too deep in contemplation of the day ahead. Was Sister Monica Joan asking her to pass something - perhaps the jam?

"Fourteen", says Sister Monica Joan, this time more distinctly.

"I'm sorry Sister, I don't think I understand."

But Sister Monica Joan doesn't say anything else for the duration of breakfast.

* * *

The next morning, Delia is sitting next to Sister Monica Joan. She's not looking forward to the day, and is chomping her toast in a mindless sort of way. First, threre's usual ache of a long shift, and then, tonight, a meal with her aunt and her uncle. There's nothing wrong with her aunt and uncle: they're family. If she hadn't grown a second, closer kind of family in Nonnatus House, she'd probably appreciate them more - knowing there's somewhere she can turn to if she needs a homecooked meal and to hear familiar voices, who can at least be expected to feign an interest in her trivial problems. But since she has these people all around her at the breakfast table, the prospect of an evening with her aunt and uncle is coming to distinctly resemble a chore. For the routine her aunt and uncle keep - uncle home by 5, dinner on the table by 6, the occasional trip to the cinema - they might as well have stayed in deepest darkest Wales, and not bothered moving to London. Still, there'll be some additional entertainment tonight: Delia can expect to be treated to a display of their holiday snaps. That might liven the evening a little, were it not for the fact that her aunt and uncle always go back to the same place for their holidays each year - Pembrokeshire.

Delia can feel her mood souring with each bite of toast. She stares into middle distance and tries the technique of thinking of something she has to look forward to. She focuses on her day off - still two days away. Three, if you count the day which must be got through today. She does. Three days then.

"Thirteen", announces Sister Monica Joan.

"Sorry, Sister?"

"Thirteen." And no more.

The next morning it's twelve, and the day after that eleven. Sister Monica Joan offers these gnomic prouncements, then makes no other comment during breakfast. Breakfast is therefore a calmer affair than usual, but also rather unsettling.

It quickly becomes ritual. They have, of course, tried asking Sister Monica Joan for an explanation.

"Sister Monica Joan", Barbara had tenatively begun, "I was wondering what you were counting?"

"I am forever counting, for the number of the stupid is infinite."

And that was all the reply they received.

She's perfectly normal - well, at least, by Sister Monica Joan's subjective standards - for the rest of the day. This doesn't stop Sister Julienne going to the effort of having Doctor Turner give her a brief examination.

"Strong as an ox" was his verdict. Sister Monica Joan nodded approvingly. Much of it must be down to diet.

(A bit pointless to have Doctor Turner give her a check-up, Delia thinks. She's not really that much different to her usual self. And, besides, if there is something wrong, it's surely neurological - which, with all possible respect, is probably beyond Doctor Turner's competency to diagnose. Sister Monica Joan isn't likely to be literally counting down the days until her heart gives out or some tangible health problem manifests itself. Still, if it reassures Sister Julienne that her pastoral duties are fulfilled.)

Sister Mary Cynthia suspects it might be some sort of apocalyptic fervour. Now that she thinks on it, she did see Sister Monica Joan reading a book on computations of Passover and Easter a few weeks ago. Perhaps she's felt inspired to anticipate some great heavenly conflict. It would be approximately the right time of year. That's the thing about the Christian calendar - it comes in crescendos and diminuendos. At this point in the year, they're definitely on an up-swing.

Barbara, by contrast, is completely convinced it's something to do with the Space Race. Sister Monica Joan is given to watching the nightly news, and the bulletins are always full of some or another report about great world powers seeking to reach into the heavens. Barbara scours the newspapers looking for information about the space programmes. Perhaps it's cosmonauts. "It sounds like she's counting down to a launch, doesn't it?"

Down she counts, metronomically. Down to eight, down to five, down to one, and then -

"Zero", she says. It's the eighteenth day of March.

There's a pause around the breakfast table. Of course everyone was expecting it, and of course everyone waits in silence for about a minute, as if someone or something was about to burst in - whether the event anticipated was a sort of early Easter Rapture, or the advent of Yuri Gagarin.

Of course, there isn't a sound. Sister Monica Joan does not look non-plussed. She calmly continues with the work of eating breakfast. The rest of the assembled breakfasters look from one to another, smiling sheepishly, as if trying to show each other that they hadn't expected anything to happen. Not really. Conversation is just about to start again, Sister Julienne having signalled an end to the silence by spreading butter on her toast when - suddenly, jarringly - the Nonnatus House doors clatter open. Bold footsteps, and then a shout.

But the shout is in a broad Leeds accent, not the clipped Russian of a cosmonaut. It's only Nurse Crane, who wants to speak to Barbara about mixing up the addresses of Mrs Smyth and Mrs Smith, after a very embarrasing incident this morning (only one of the two is newly pregnant). So the only unusual thing to happen that morning is Barbara receiving half an hour of detailed instruction on the art of the rolodex. A class on filing is promised for the next day.

Nothing else happens at breakfast.

* * *

"I'm not sure about this - he's very nice to look at, but the conversation is such hard work."

Trixie is in her room, preparing for a date, with Patsy and Delia as her audience. Trixie, of course, doesn't need advice on her make-up or couture; Patsy and Delia are here attempting to persuade her to actually go out on the date, which has been arranged for a week.

Trixie's met the chap once before, at a dance. "I wondered if he might be a bit of a wet flannel, but that didn't matter so much when we were dancing." Except now he's taking her to dinner, and a great sense of rhythm won't cover social deficiencies so well when they have to spend a couple of hours sitting across the table from one another.

"Maybe he's the type who takes a while to warm up", offers Delia. "Give him a chance. Sometimes you don't know immediately."

"Well, did you? Know immediately, I mean?" Trixie fires back.

"Yes, _did_ you?" Patsy is suddenly very interested in this line of questioning.

"I liked you straight away", Delia says plainly, and without pause.

Trixie raises her eyebrows. Patsy and Delia's efforts to encourage her dating life are well-meaning but hardly helpful. The situation is not quite the blind leading the blind, but it's somewhere close to it.

"But that doesn't apply in every case." Delia tries to make amends.

"And he's making an effort, whisking you away from Poplar and off to the most expensive place in a ten mile radius", Patsy adds, charitably.

(For what it's worth, Patsy knew straight away, too.)

* * *

Trixie returns to Nonnatus House approximately 40 minutes after she left. This can't be a good sign; but her mascara isn't running, and she looks put-together, so there's no need to jump to action stations. Patsy and Delia are sitting on the sofa, Sister Monica Joan in a chair, engrossed in the television. The two share a conspiratorial glance as Trixie sighs dramatically.

"You know, almost from the moment I arrived I wished I hadn't turned up. I shan't trust you two with my love life again!"

Patsy and Delia both know that they are not required to respond to this comment. They wait for Trixie to continue.

"Far worse than a wet flannel, as it turned out. Almost as soon as we sat down he was trying to force a drink upon me. I told him that I'd an early start the next morning, and he said that some women just don't know their luck. And spent the next ten minutes reminding me what a great favour he was doing me by taking to such a very upmarket restaurant, obviously not the kind I was used to."

Trixie pauses for effect. Given what those first fifteen minutes of the date sound like, she's within her rights to exercise maximum drama in the re-telling.

"And then, when he _finally_ stopped talking about his work, he asked me if I enjoyed midwifery, and before I could finish my sentence, he started complaining about girls 'too stupid to keep their legs together'."

There's a sharp intake of breath from the sofa.

"Well, that did it for me. So I ordered the most expensive thing on the menu - which sounded quite awful, lobster with melon and some other strange garnish. And I leaned over to him and told him that, since we were having such a lovely time, I'd break my rule and we should get some champagne to celebrate. And then I excused myself, and made to go to the ladies...and left."

They both laugh.

"You know," Trixie adds, shaking her head, "the terrible thing is that 40 minutes isn't even a record in the highly competitive category of 'Trixie Franklin's Shortest Date'."

"Come and sit with us, Trixie. We haven't got any lobster, but there's a slice of cake left. Saved just in case your date wouldn't run to dessert."

Delia shuffles along the sofa. "Squeeze up Pats - you may have absurdly long legs but that doesn't mean to can monopolise all the space", making to force Patsy's leg along with her hand. Delia then seems to forget to remove her hand. Trixie sits down next to Delia.

"You may have had a terrible evening, Trix, but we too have news. During your short absence, we have cracked the mystery of Sister Monica Joan's countdown."

If Sister Monica Joan hears her name being mentioned, she doesn't turn away from the television screen. She watches it as intently as she would a cake rising in the oven.

"Oh? Well, do tell me. At least it wasn't some kind of nuclear launch, although that would have rounded off my evening nicely."

Patsy gestures towards the television - well, more specifically, to the figure of Sister Monica Joan, craning at the set, her chair unhealthily close to the screen.

"The Eurovision Song Contest."

Just as Patsy says this, the BBC announcer intones: "And now, live from the Villa Louvigny in Luxembourg, the Eurovision Song Contest for 1962".

"And behold, it is come!" Sister Monica Joan leans forward and turns the volume up to an extreme level.

Earlier, as Patsy and Delia sat on the sofa and debated how to spend what remained of the evening, Sister Monica Joan had explained to Sister Julienne that she'd decided to excuse herself from Compline. For the purposes of Eurovision.

"For the broadcast, is, in itself, a service of peace, and therefore demands my attention."

Sister Julienne had looked not wholly convinced by the proposition.

"When one thinks that but 20 years ago these nations were at war. And now they lift their voices in song together. That is an act of worship, just the same as Compline."

"It's still a competition, sister."

"Alle Menschen werden Brüder."

It's better not to argue when Sister Monica Joan moves beyond English. So, faced with _Ode to Joy_ and further justifications, Sister Julienne gives way.

Introductions are going on in a stage somewhere in Mittel Europa. The BBC announcer is trying to keep up with names as the camera pans across the faces of all 16 men who will, apparently, be conducting the orchestra for their national songs this evening.

"Well, this is not how I envisioned spending my night."

"We're not such terrible company, are we?"

A response to this is not possible given the volume which Sister Monica Joan now insists on.

Sister Monica Joan is particularly taken by the German entry, a dark haired girl who sings a jaunty song about two Italians. Sister Monica Joan stands at the end of the performance and applauds.

There's about 30 seconds of grace when the broadcast cuts out during the entry for the Netherlands.

"Thank goodness for that. I couldn't understand a word they were saying, but the tune sounds as if it were composed by Bill and Ben The Flowerpot Men."

Despite Trixie's complaints at the better evening she ought to be having, she stays until the end (quite late), to hear the jury votes and watch their calculations.

The winner is French, a woman who sways at the microphone and sings a ballad. Sister Monica Joan considers the German girl to have been robbed, and laments the deafness of the Eurovision jurors. Clearly, Sister Julienne did not need to stress the competitive element of Eurovision to her.

The programme finishes with the winner reprising her song, clasping a bouquet of flowers, while men in tuxedos look on in the background, as the credits roll over and the voice of the BBC announcer dies away.

The French girl is singing something about first love, never forgotten, never forgotten, never forgotten, making us dream and tremble. It it weren't sung in French - giving it an air of sophistication - it might sound quite trite.

Trixie exhales, bored, and stands, making to go to bed. Patsy and Delia watch to the end, Delia's head resting on Patsy's shoulder. Sister Monica Joan is still engrossed in the television, or - if she notices - she says nothing.

* * *

 ** _A/N: snip_**


	6. The Day Trip

**Chapter 6. The Day Trip (or, What Happens in Basingstoke Stays in Basingstoke)  
**

The three of them are in Trixie and Patsy's room, drawing straws. Well - toothpicks. There are two full-length toothpicks and one stubby half pick in Trixie's hand, but only their tips are visible above her grip.

They are drawing toothpicks to see which of them is obliged to go with Nurse Crane to Basingstoke on Friday, a trip no-one wants to make. The problem is not Nurse Crane, but the reason compelling her to drive to Basingstoke: a course on new developments in midwifery, to be held at the town's conference centre from 10 'til 6. ("Until 6, on a Friday! Even my father would think that was excessive!" had been Barbara's unrestrained response when the threat of attendance was first raised.) New National Health guidelines stipulate that at least two of the midwives from Nonnatus House must attend.

It's not that the three of them lack professionalism, but, having read the advance information sent to Nonnatus, the course looks entirely useless. It includes sessions entitled "A Holistic Approach to Midwifery" and "How to Think Your Way Through Labour". As Trixie had observed with disgust, "I've never told anyone giving birth to think - I just tell them to do". Patsy's of a like mind - there aren't really that many ways to deliver a baby, when you get to the sharp end of things. And if it finishes at 6 (but, really, 6.30, because when do such things ever run to time?), the long drive back will sabotage any plans for the evening.

Nurse Crane wasn't much happier about being sent - but she had the car, so it fell to her. So that's the prospect of a two hour drive (and four, for the round trip) to Basingstoke with a decidedly snippy Nurse Crane. She'd uttered the phrase "teaching grandmother to suck eggs" several times.

But the places are booked. It's been decided that the nurses - not the sisters - will go. No-one's quite sure how Sister Mary Cynthia and Sister Winifred managed to wiggle off that hook. Trixie had suggested - sweetly - that perhaps Sister Mary Cynthia would like to go anyway, seeing as so many items in the conference schedule sounded as if they might strike a note with ideas she herself had expressed about their work. Sister Mary Cynthia had fixed Trixie with the sort of no-nonsense look that said 'I may be in religious orders now, but I still know exactly what you're like'. And declined, citing a project of spiritual development that required her to be in prayer that day.

Barbara picks first. It's one of the long toothpicks; the relief on her face is plain to see.

"Just you and me now, Patsy."

"Gosh, this is just like a poker game - or at least what I imagine a poker game would be like", observes Barbara.

Trixie holds out her hand, closes her eyes, utters a silent prayer (the technique has not passed her by after all these years at Nonnatus House), and lets Patsy draw.

* * *

Patsy settles down for the two hour drive to Basingstoke. That morning, with a pitying look, Barbara had presented her with a pink and white striped bag containing at least a kilo of jelly babies. That was some comfort. As predicted, Nurse Crane navigates the streets of Poplar with a confident familiarity, which means she need focus less on the road and can concentrate all her attention on describing the many ways in which the day is entirely redundant. Did no-one consider that there might be useful things she should be doing for her patients, rather than driving to some god-forsaken commuter town in Hampshire? And, let it be known - there have never been any complaints about her technique. As far as Nurse Crane was concerned, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

"At the end of the day, I know what I know, Nurse Mount. And I know my approach works."

Patsy passes a red one to Nurse Crane and takes another jelly baby for herself (yellow - not her favourite; another curse on the day). Her thoughts drift to what Trixie and Delia will be doing this evening, seeing as they'll both be off. Perhaps that was the silver lining, and by thinking of it she could force herself into a sunnier mood. Trixie and Delia were friends (there had never been any doubt in Patsy's mind, of course, that they should be and would be). But she'd had a small thrill of pleasure, lately, when she walked in on Trixie and Delia talking conspiratorially, laughing together, or, even, rolling their eyes at Patsy in unison. There'd now been several times when Patsy had walked into her bedroom, only to be pounced upon by Trixie with the words, "You'll never guess what Delia told me about your time in training...". And then Patsy had had to do rather a lot of talking, explaining her behaviour - behaviour which, in fact, Delia had so often exaggerated, and made seem far more outrageous than it really had been at the time. Half the terribly exciting, terribly naughty things which Trixie believed Patsy to have done, had in fact been Delia's idea - or at least, done by both of them equally. But Delia had scurried back to her own bedroom long before - and left Patsy to deal with Trixie's many questions.

Of course, Trixie had informed Delia of her awareness of their relationship in the most Trixie-like way possible. Just after Trixie had told Patsy she knew exactly what was going on - and conveyed her implacable, settled approval of it, Delia had come back, off shift, and knocked on the door of their room - as if to borrow some pins, or a magazine. Patsy was still reeling from the calmness of Trixie's declaration.

Trixie had stood up and walked towards the door. Patsy had assumed that Trixie was tactfully leaving the room, so that Patsy could explain their new situation to Delia. Although Patsy wasn't quite sure she had the words, or that, if she did, she could form them at that moment. Experiencing a mild form of shock, perhaps.

But when Trixie got to the threshold, and her hand closed around the door handle, she turned her head around sharply. "And Delia - just so you know - I know about the two of you. You musn't blame Patsy - she may be a terrible liar, but she didn't tell me. And I'm happy for you. At the risk of sounding like a proud father, I absolutely approve of your choice."

There was a small pause. "Now I'm going to the bathroom to apply a night cream, but I shall be back in ten minutes - so mind what the two of you get up to."

Trixie sashayed out of the room like some grand dame. It felt like all the air in the room had left with her. Delia had flopped down on the bed next to Patsy.

"Is she always so - direct?"

"That's Trixie. Take no prisoners. It's the same when she's in action." Silence. "Deels, are you ok?"

"I think so. It's a strange feeling, isn't it?"

"Mm. Like relief, but not quite."

"And she really won't say anything?"

"No. No - she's our friend. Trix would never do anything like that. She's quite relaxed about -" Patsy makes a vague, circling gesture with her hands, as if she's trying to trace the outline of something in the air which isn't there - "all this. Only-"

"Only?"

"Only I wonder whether this isn't a warning. That we ought to be more...discreet."

Delia's brain had, until this moment, been proceeding slowly, step-by-step. But her reaction to this was visceral.

"Discreet? Like the way we were before? Where I'd see you once a week if we were lucky, and you'd be afraid to hold my hand for more than a moment? No. No, we can't go back to that, Pats. I refuse to go back to that. So we just have to go on." She said, fiercely, and gripped Patsy's hand more tightly.

"No, we can't very well go back. Oh, Deels."

And they sat for a while. Trixie returned, came back in, face cream masking whatever expression it was that she was wearing (glee? sympathy? exhaustion?).

"Everything all right in here?"

Delia got up and hugged her, really hugged her, for at least half a minute.

"Delia, sweetie, there's no need to be so dramatic" (the irony of those words from someone who had detonated a bomb then retreated to the bathroom for her evening ablutions). And then, "gosh, you've strong arms. You'd better release me before I choke. Careful you don't get this cream all over you, though".

* * *

By twenty past twelve, Patsy and Nurse Crane have spent more than two hours in an unremarkable conference centre on the outskirts of Basingstoke. The sort of place which, if you're lucky enough not to have any business there, you'd drive by without giving a second thought.

It will be lunch soon. But the lunch break is taking its time in arriving.

Patsy is not enjoying herself much, and she's learning even less. But, being a head taller than other students at school, and, later, than the nurses at the training school, and having a shock of red hair, and possessed of other not-quite-normal predilections which tend to draw attention, she's long mastered the art of blending into the background. So Patsy has resigned herself to sitting in one of these uncomfortable ("modernist") plastic chairs inside this brutalist poured concrete edifice for another - oh god - four and a half hours after the break. She's commited to answering as few questions as possible, and nodding while new "techniques" are explained to her, all of which flatly contradict what she knows from experience to be true. She keeps her looks of distain to a professional minimum.

But Nurse Crane has never been required to blend into the background, or even thought it necessary. From the sighs emanating from her lips, the shaking of her head and - Patsy can't actually see her face, but experience fills it in for her - her expressions, she is making it very clear exactly how much she appreciates this experience.

The instructor can't have missed it either. Phyllis is sitting, for some reason, at the front of the class.

The instructor's back is up. But after a particularly blunt comment from the floor (and from exactly who on the floor is no surprise), she seems to have decided Nurse Crane is a lost cause.

"Perhaps we can't teach an old dog new tricks", the instructor says, and sweetly smiled.

Of course, there was a response. The initial skirmishes seemed now to have broken out into open warfare. Well, it wasn't really Nurse Crane who started it, thinks Patsy. If you discount the sighing, and the tutting, and the clicking of her tongue, and her rather loud asides.

"You think what you want, my love, but I've delivered more babies than you've had hot dinners. And this will not work."

After that, someone else asks a question - one of those ridiculous questions which is really more about the asker displaying their knowledge, and flattering their own experience, rather than clarifying anything - and diverts the instructor's attention. Small mercies.

At half past twelve precisely (and not a moment too soon), they break for lunch. Nurse Crane walks right past the table of sandwiches laid out in platters, and the bottles of water arranged behind them. She doesn't stop to take a plate or a serviette.

"Come along, Nurse Mount."

"Nurse Crane?"

"We're leaving. I'm firing up the Morris. You needn't look worried - if it comes to it, I'll tell Sister Julienne that this was all my doing, and you had no chance but to leave with me or be stranded in the back of beyond. Unless, of course, you're finding any of this useful?"

"Not a chance."

They flee.

* * *

The Morris is pulling out and away from benighted Basingstoke.

"I must say, that was a waste."

"An absolute bust, kid."

"Well, thank you, Nurse Crane, I'm not sure I could have endured another however-many hours of that."

"A pleasure, Nurse Mount. And we'll make good time on the motorway."

"Jelly baby?"

They drive for a while in companionable silence, until Nurse Crane speaks with a slight note of uncertainty in her voice. An uncertainty which wasn't there half an hour earlier when talking about the basic principles of midwifery.

"I spotted quite a decent-looking shopping centre on our way here."

"Was that the one just before the roundabout spelling out the town's name in flowers?"

"The very same. I wondered, Nurse Mount, if you might help me with something. For my holiday, you see. I was thinking about a pair of slacks. Of course I had several pairs during the war, but I imagine the cuts have all changed. And I couldn't help but notice what a nice pair you had on last week. So - seeing as we have the time -"

"Nurse Crane, I'd be delighted to assist. I cannot think of a better way to fill our afternoon." Patsy truly means it.

"Nothing too fashionable, mind. Just something - serviceable."

"I think I can help with that."

* * *

It's about five o'clock when Barbara bursts into Nonnatus House - panting, coughing, possessed of information of the utmost importance but having tremendous difficulty locating the breath needed to convey it. Trixie and Delia are sitting in the parlour, debating the relative merits of an evening at the pictures or an evening of dancing. And Delia's just finished the story of how Patsy almost got thrown off a ward during training for telling matron the soap she stocked wasn't strong enough for working up a lather.

Barbara is red. Red doesn't begin to cover it. If she was wearing a cap when she left wherever she's come from, it's now scrunched up in her hand. Her cloak looks as if it is strangling her. Barbara's state is so indecorous that Nurse Crane can probably sense her lack of proper attire from Basingstoke.

Barbara begins speaking with gestures before she has sufficient breath in her lungs to speak with words.

"There's a - come, quick - they said it wouldn't be there for long and we'll miss -." The words degenerate into spluttering.

"Barbara. You must take a breath." Trixie stands up and puts her hands on Barbara's shoulder. "That's right - breathe." (Delia is struck by the fact that this is presumably the very same advice Trixie doles out to women in labour, daily).

"Now, tell us what the matter is."

"There's a whale in the Thames. It's swum right up the river. Only come now, because we'll miss it if you don't."

"A whale?"

"Yes. A real live whale - swimming up and down. Everyone's out to see it."

"In the Thames?"

"Yes - and I'm going to see it, and so can you, if you come - now."

They run for the bicycles, all three of them. Patsy is absolutely going to kill me if she finds out I let Delia ride a bike at this speed, thinks Trixie.

* * *

They're crammed tight against the iron railings, looking out on the Thames. The three of them, and half of London, by the sound and look of it. Somewhere, in the water, there's a behemoth moving under the surface.

People in the crowd are turning to each other, talking to complete strangers, asking where they think it's come from, and what the authorities will do. And does anyone remember such a thing happening before? Not in my lifetime, or my mother's. You wouldn't have thought the water was clean enough - well, that's why they're trying to guide it out, I expect. Will they be using nets? That's anyone's guess. Surely a net would only frighten the poor great beast.

It's a spectacle, but a strange one. What a thing, to watch a whale swimming right down into the heart of London. And yet, everyone is urging the creature to turn and make its way back down the Thames and out to the sea. There are people in the crowd - office workers, housewives, children - shouting at the beast, as if it would heed their advice if only they could lift their voices high enough.

It's almost like being back in the war - in an air-raid shelter - this frantic sense of common purpose. Of an event of great, almost incomprehensible, magnitude falling into your life, and the sheer strangeness of you being the one to witness to it.

Boats have been launched - and try to drive it back to sea, herding the Thames whale, like a particularly awkward lost sheep.

Twilight sets in rapidly, and soon there's not much left to see, other than the white searchlights of the boats, breaking on and off the black waves. The crowd slowly dwindles and dissipates.

The way is still too full of pedestrians and first-time whale-watchers for there to be a clear path to cycle, so the three of them wheel their bicycles along for a bit.

"I do feel a little bit bad that Patsy is missing this", Barbara begins. "She and Phyllis are probably having such a terrible time."

"I don't doubt she'll complain about it for days." Delia speaks from experience.

"She better not complain about the toothpicks, though. That was entirely fair and above board."

"Well", ventures Barbara, blushing. "I may have a small confession to make. When we were deciding who should go, I could see which toothpick I was drawing. And I meant to tell Patsy this morning, and do the decent thing and take her place, but her face was like thunder, so I just gave her my jelly babies instead and ran off."

They all agree that this is information better not shared with Patsy.

* * *

 **A/N (1): Sod it. After a week or so, I've decided to pull myself together and ignore the hate messages. (After all, Phyllis Crane, my all-time hero, wouldn't just give up on Spanish classes because someone said her pronunciation was awful.) I so, so appreciate the kind reviews encouraging me to continue, you lovely supportive people, and thanks for bearing with. And sorry if the last note was a bit... dramatic and flouncey.  
**

 **A/N (2): Yes, the Thames in the 1960s probably was much too polluted to support a whale; but please suspend your disbelief or otherwise think of this as magic realism.**

 **A/N (3): And part of the credit for any enjoyment derived from this should go the reviewer who wondered what Delia's reaction would be to finding out that Trixie had found out.**


	7. Barbara Makes Tea

**Chapter 7. In Which Barbara Makes Tea  
**

If there's one thing Barbara Gilbert is good at, it's making polite conversation. She's actually, in fact, good at quite a number of things. But this is the one thing that she feels she's been trained her whole life to do. In all those years as a parish assistant, she learned how to talk politely about almost any small thing: to make the noises and sounds that assure someone that you are hearing what they want and need heard. To lend a sympathetic ear.

Before she attained the status of parish assistant - at the ages of 9, 10, 11 - she would accompany her father on his visits at the weekends or after school. The presence of a child in the home (especially when her father was helping households deal with something rather grim or upsetting) seemed to bring people comfort. She'd pass out sweets to suck on. So her politeness and ability to listen developed hand-in-hand with her sweet tooth.

So when Mrs Busby arrives at Nonnatus House half an hour early, Barbara is not confident of the social situation, exactly, but happy enough to sit and wait with her. It would be rude not to, and, besides, she was about to make a cup of tea anyway.

In addition, Barbara must admit to being a little curious about Mrs Busby - when she came to Nonnatus House at Easter, she'd only exchanged a brief greeting and passed her the sugar. Barbara hasn't met any of Trixie's relatives (but the story doesn't sound very happy); nor any of Patsy's (from what little she has gleaned, the same holds true there). It's strange to make such good friends without knowing their families: it's as if they're untied from their moorings, loosed from the people who have formed them, for good or ill. It's like looking at the results of a series of medical tests, but without having any idea of who the patient is, of how they live, whether they're sanguine or made frantic by doctors and hospitals. And, of course, Barbara's almost certainly never going to meet any of the sisters' relatives. So this is her chance.

Barbara is also smart enough to realise that there are certain subjects people like talking about, and certain things they don't.

Mrs Busby – she recognises instantly – isn't one to discuss 'exciting things you can do in London'. In any case, Mrs Busby is down here for a funeral, and has come a day early to visit her daughter, so she probably isn't wanting recommendations about parks to visit or trying an Indian meal. (She's also not sure whether Mrs Busby would be the type to take, instantly, to Indian food. But – perhaps she would. People surprise you.)

Barbara's father always said: get people onto a subject they're interested in, because it makes them warm up to you. Barbara has been well trained, so she does just that.

Barbara doesn't know a lot about Mrs Busby, so she doesn't have much to go on, but she does know how much she cares for Delia (as evidenced in her worry about her moving back to London, her careful monitoring of her daughter's health, and in that letter she wrote advising Delia to be sure to keep to the better areas when visiting Paris). Besides, people like talking about their children – it's a safe bet.

"Did Delia mention how she single-handedly saved the scouts' camping trip last month?"

Mrs Busby sniffs. "Yes?"

Barbara tries praise – try laying it on a bit thicker, her father would say. "Tom said he couldn't possibly have managed without her – a real godsend. I would have been quite useless!"

(Barbara adds that last sentence to show how much she, too, admires Delia's capabilities and fearlessness in the face of tent pegs and ropes.)

Mrs Busby seems slightly more engaged. She turns to look at Barbara properly. Barbara can't quite escape the feeling she's being weighed and found wanting.

"Where was this?"

"Oh, somewhere in Sussex – the Downs, I think. They went away camping for a whole weekend."

"And this... _Tom_ , did you say?"

"Oh, I'm sorry: he's our curate. He said-" (Barbara tries to recall the exact phrasing) "-that he couldn't have managed without her, that she completely saved the weekend."

"I expect this Tom is married, then? Are his children in the scouts?" Mrs Busby sips her tea. The tea is, given the girl's age, not quite as bad as she had expected it to be. Someone must have taught her how to make a decent pot.

"Oh, no! He's much too young to be married." (This is perhaps not quite true. Barbara inadvertently blushes, hoping Mrs Busby doesn't notice.)

"And he's good friends with my Delia?"

"Oh, we're all good friends with Delia", Barbara assures her. "It would be impossible _not_ to be friends with her."

Barbara remembers she's got a photograph of the camping weekend in her handbag. She's meant to be mounting it on cardboard for a display in the church, a show of parish activities. She locates it, and hands it over to Mrs Busby.

The photograph shows Tom, Delia and a swarm of scouts (not all of them; only the ones who would stay still enough for the camera) at the entrance to a campsite somewhere in Sussex. Tom and Delia are standing next to each other at the back, faces smiling. Barbara thinks that the photograph was probably taken before Derek Jones decided to put his hand in a campfire as a "scientific experiment".

"Quite tall, isn't he?" remarks Mrs Busby.

Barbara briefly – only briefly – glances over at the still-remaining stain on the wall, which is, coincidentally, almost the same height as Tom.

"Yes, quite tall. Not _very_ tall. A normal height for a man, I'd say." (Barbara is acutely aware that she doesn't want to insult Mrs Busby by implicitly suggesting that Delia is short by comparison. She once managed that when visiting a new mother with two other children and her short – really, quite unusually short – husband. Barbara, stopping by at breakfast time and finding a house in chaos had tried to help with the older children by telling them to "eat your Weetabix, so you grow nice and tall like...". Except she'd had to stop before she got to the word 'father'. Anyway, the sleight was not forgiven easily: to this day, if the family requires a visit, she begs Trixie to swap with her.)

"Do Delia and this Tom spend a lot of time together?" (Mrs Busby is trying to sound casual and not hopeful; Barbara doesn't pick up on the deliberateness of the question or the inflection.)

"Well, they did put an awful lot of work into planning a birthday party for me last month. Tom said that Delia had practically dragged him out of a parochial council meeting so they could make it to the grocer's for a tin of Carnation Caramel before it closed. The cake called for rather particular ingredients, you see. And, apparently, Mrs Trevelyan, one of the committee members, was absolutely boiling with anger that he'd left before they could discuss the church's decorative budget for the next year."

Barbara thinks to herself that it really was very sweet of Tom to go to the effort of making the birthday cake himself (rather than passing the job off to someone else), especially when she knew exactly how limited his culinary skills were.

"So you can see, Mrs Busby, Delia is quite part of the family here already. Quite as much as me, and I've been here a year longer."

Mrs Busby seems pleased by this. She says (still a little stiffly), "it's very kind of you to say so."

This is going rather well; Mrs Busby seems to be warming up to her. Barbara presses on.

"And you know, Delia's a marvellous nurse too. You must have heard about how she delivered a baby over the phone. But she probably hasn't told you about when Patsy sprained her wrist a little while ago – well, at first we all thought she'd broken it, and she'd fallen over too, so we were all a bit worried about concussion. Anyway, Delia cancelled her plans for the evening straight away, and made her an ice-pack, and waited with her for hours until she could have an X-ray. And because she knew everyone in the hospital, Delia insisted that they interrupt the consultant's evening meal to have him look at it."

Obviously, thought Barbara, it wasn't really a difficult job, medically speaking, to make up an ice-pack, but Delia had cancelled all her evening plans without a second thought or complaint. She'd insisted, in fact, on taking Patsy to the hospital. Barbara wasn't quite sure that she'd have been so solicitous, so caring, without any resentment at the loss of a free evening.

Mrs Busby sits up a little straighter in her chair and looks displeased. Perhaps, Barbara worries, she didn't put enough milk in the tea.

Then, immediately, Barbara realises her mistake – what a stupid, stupid, thoughtless comment! Of course she shouldn't be using the word "concussion" around Mrs Busby, not after the terrible things she must have gone through last year with Delia's head injury.

"Oh true apothecary, thy drugs are quick!" the old nun pipes up. Mrs Busby is startled: she hadn't noticed the old nun, hidden behind her knitting, a plate of sweet cakes balanced on the arm of the big, high-backed chair. She recognises – half-recognises – the quotation.

"Is that Hamlet, sister?" asks Barbara.

"It is the Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. But your ear is to be congratulated for its Shakespearean tuning, Nurse Gilbert."

Mrs Busby thinks Romeo and Juliet seems a very strange and - she might say - inappropriate thing to be quoting at this particular moment in the conversation. Not that the old nun was really part of this conversation to begin with.

Barbara leans forward conspiratorially. "Sorry, that's Sister Monica Joan. You mustn't mind her too much. She and Delia get on like a house on fire."

Mrs Busby doesn't say anything. What she thinks about Sister Monica Joan is unreadable. Barbara wonders whether it might be time for a change of topic. But Mrs Busby isn't giving her much to work with.

Barbara casts around for a nice, safe topic of conversation, and finds: holidays.

"It was such a lovely summer, wasn't it? I'd have liked to have gone somewhere a bit more exotic, but I only managed to get to Liverpool. To see my family." (Barbara appreciates you shouldn't monopolise the conversation by talking too much about yourself, but provides this last piece of information for explanation, lest Mrs Busby think she was doing anything untoward Up North. She seems slightly old-fashioned in that respect: it's probably best to be careful.)

"What about you? Did you spend it in Wales?"

(It doesn't really look like Mrs Busby is paying attention). "Oh. Yes. The Isle of Man. Delia's father – my husband – loves it there; he used to go as a little boy."

"That sounds nice. It's so close to Liverpool, but we never had the chance to go when I was growing up. I always used to see the ferries going across and wonder what it would be like."

"We sailed from Holyhead. I don't much care for the ferry terminal there."

Barbara nods. Having never seen the Isle of Man, she was hoping – for the sake of the flow of conversation – that Mrs Busby might mention something she had liked about the Isle of Man. A beach, or a guest house, or – Barbara doesn't know – the local cuisine.

"Imagine Delia going to Paris, though!"

"Imagine." (Is Mrs Busby's only response.)

"Delia's so lucky she had Patsy to go with: she's been before, she must know all the places to stay and the places to visit."

"Yes. She must."

"Their stories made it all sound very bohemian!"

Mrs Busby coughs. And looks into her cup. "Could I trouble you for some more tea?"

Barbara happily obliges.

* * *

Any illusions are shattered when there's a clatter in the hallway, and Delia, followed by Patsy, comes bursting in. Well, they're side-by-side really. Or maybe Patsy's leading Delia.

Fleetingly, Barbara thinks how well Delia looks, how much brighter since resuming her work. People say the city air is bad for you, but that simply isn't the case for Delia: she looks so animated and alive, and moves around with a sense of purpose. Patsy, beside her, looks wonderful too – but of course, she always does. Barbara wishes she had Patsy's boldness when it came to fashion. She's not sure she could get away with a dress of that colour and cut at a dance, let alone just going out for a stroll and a spot of tea with Delia. For a moment, Barbara swells with pride: she's proud to have such lovely, kind, generous friends; and proud of herself for being friends with them. Obviously pride is a sin, but this is quite a small one in the grand scheme of sins.

Delia's face is warm with happiness, laughing over something, until her eyes fall upon her mother sitting at the table.

"Mam! We weren't expecting you until half past."

Delia looks at her watch nervously, and shakes her wrist, assessing whether it has stopped.

"I was early." The answer is self-explanatory, but Mrs Busby provides it anyway.

"Hello, Mrs Busby", says Patsy. Barbara notes it's the same expression Patsy uses when she meets someone for the first time - new patient or new nurse - as if trying hard to make a good impression. Which is strange, given that Patsy has met Mrs Busby several times before. "Are you well?"

"Quite well, thank you."

Barbara explains, "Mrs Busby and I have just been having some tea. I'm not sure my brew is quite up to her high standards." Barbara's tone is light, to show that no harm is meant by this remark. After all, there are many different types of tea and many different ways of making it. Preferences are subjective. There's no accounting for taste.

"It was perfectly nice, thank you", says Mrs Busby, her manner somewhat strained.

Delia steps in to move the conversation along. "I just need to get the tickets from my room and then I'll be right down. If we leave now, we should get good seats."

Delia and Mrs Busby are only going three stops on the bus to hear a semi-professional jazz quartet. It is, in truth, not the sort of thing that Barbara would have pegged Mrs Busby as liking. And, as it doesn't start for an hour, Barbara can't quite fathom why Delia is so keen to leave immediately. Maybe she's got things to discuss with her mother, things she - quite reasonably - doesn't want the whole of Nonnatus House to hear. It can be difficult to get a bit of privacy when you need it here.

"Are you going with them, Patsy?"

"No, we only had two tickets – and I thought Mrs Busby might like mine." Patsy smiles at Mrs Busby - Barbara recognises it as Patsy's 'making the best of the situation' smile.

In the ordinary course of conversation, this is the point at which Mrs Busby - who is, after all, taking Patsy's ticket - would stumble over a half apology; or say that it was really very kind of Patsy to give over the ticket to her, and apologise for coming down at short notice, and check that Patsy was quite sure she didn't mind missing the concert? And Patsy, in the ordinary course of conversation, would say absolutely not, it was no great sacrifice on her part, and, besides, Delia had been so looking forward to seeing her mother. But, for some reason, this routine stage of half-apologies and breezy reassurances is stepped over. No-one says anything.

"Oh", says Barbara, awkwardly. "Sorry – I didn't realise. Still, I don't imagine it's sold out – it would probably be quite easy to get another ticket."

Delia and Patsy seem to exchange a dark glance.

Sister Monica Joan, still in the armchair, ventures into the conversation again: "Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee, for wither thou goest, I will go".

Barbara knows she recognises the quotation, and that she's got it right this time. "That's Ruth 1.16, Sister", she pronounces, proudly (this type of pride in her own cleverness probably isn't very virtuous).

Sister Monica Joan nods with approval. "I see Lady Wisdom is your close friend, and Brother Knowledge your pleasant companion."

"Oh, no", says Patsy. "I've – it's fine, I offered to cover Trixie's shift for her."

Barbara feels bad for causing such awkwardness.

"Right", said Patsy, breaking the silence, "well – I'm on call within the hour, so if you'll excuse me, I'll change into uniform."

Delia goes upstairs with her, promising her mother she'll be right down. There's the noise of their footsteps on the stairs – walking up almost in perfect lock – and then the sound is gone.

"I'm sure you'll have a wonderful evening tonight, Mrs Busby."

Mrs Busby murmurs something.

Barbara considers how her father might bring this conversation to an end, by striking a supportive, empathetic kind of note. "And I do hope you're not worrying too much being down here in London. She's not alone, you know. We all look out for her. Especially Patsy."

"Yes. It must be good to have such...good friends."

Barbara opens her mouth to mention the laughter she sometimes hears coming from Delia's room quite late at night; or the supportive hand Patsy places on Delia's arm when the subject of the accident comes up; or the really rather outrageous stories the two of them brought back from the little bar in Paris. But she decides Mrs Busby might think badly of Patsy keeping her daughter up all night and distracting her from her work. Or, worse, Mrs Busby will think that Barbara is implying that they, here at Nonnatus House, know how to care for Delia better than her own mother. So she decides to opt for a comment which is soothing and non-specific.

"Oh yes, good friends. We're all as thick as thieves, you might say."

* * *

 **A/N (1): The sequel to this chapter would obviously be a piece about Sister Monica Joan reading and commenting upon the biblical story of David and Jonathan. I reckon she'd be all over homoerotic readings of scripture.  
**

 **A/N (2): Mainly written for the reviewer (Moa) who requested the reappearance of Mrs Busby, with a dash of what others at NH know/think about Patsy and Delia. I hope it serves.**


	8. The Hunt

**Chapter 8. The Hunt**

"But Sister, do you really think it's quite _wise_ to let Sister Monica Joan take sole charge of the Easter Egg Hunt?" Sister Winifred hisses. There's a great deal of stress on the word "wise" in that sentence, Delia observes.

Sister Julienne is implacable. "I am sure that Sister Monica Joan has applied herself to the task. Christmas may be her favourite holiday, but she is always more than keen to ensure that Easter traditions are properly observed too."

But Sister Winifred has a real bee in her bonnet (habit?) about this, Delia thinks to herself. She presses on: "Yes, and I thought so too, Sister Julienne. It's just that when I attempted to check that the eggs had been hidden – this morning – I couldn't find them anywhere in the community centre".

"You couldn't find the hidden eggs?"

Delia can't see her face, but suspects Sister Julienne is supressing a wry smile.

"No, I couldn't" (Sister Winifred misses the joke). "So then I asked Sister Monica Joan if she _had_ in fact hidden them at all, or just forgotten to – because I could help her if she hadn't done it yet. And she told me that they had been hidden, but not by her, but by her 'special assistant'—"

"Sooty, perhaps?" Sister Julienne interjects.

"No. Sweep." And Delia, sitting at the kitchen table, listening to this discussion between the sisters as they stand over the kettle, cannot help but chuckle. Sister Winifred, her face imploring, does not appear to notice.

"I see. And did you… speak with Sweep about this matter?"

"I did try, Sister Julienne, but when I told Sister Monica Joan that I couldn't understand what Sweep was saying, she told me that 'if you will not take the trouble to learn Dog, it does not seem fair to me that Sweep should trouble himself to learn English'."

Sister Julienne has nothing to say to this.

"So then, naturally, I asked whether Sweep knew any Latin and whether we might converse in that."

Sister Julienne raises an eyebrow.

"And she told me that Sweep was a pagan, and had no need for Latin, but that even if he did speak Latin, he would consider it a mad papistical language, and he would prefer to converse in the vernacular tongues which had served the great Reformers who built our church so well."

"I understand, Sister. I think it best that we assume that Sister Monica Joan, or her amanuensis, has indeed hidden the eggs. She would not neglect such an important duty, especially knowing how much it means to the children."

Sister Winifred clearly still has further objections – they're written all over her face – but she recognises by Sister Julienne's tone that the matter rests there.

Delia spends another moment finishing her tea, then hurries upstairs to report the conversation to Trixie and Patsy, who fall about laughing for a good five minutes.

* * *

It is Easter, and Sister Monica Joan controls the Egg Hunt. Possessively. Jealously. Triumphantly, after claiming it as her contribution to the day. She has no truck, she explains, with fixing bonnets for the parade.

Sister Monica Joan had no truck, in fact, with obtaining the eggs, hard-boiling the eggs or painting the eggs. "My role", she had explained, at the beginning of the enterprise, "is that of a bishop". Sister Mary Cynthia looked slightly concerned by her sister's sudden and apparently unendorsed promotion in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. "Bishop, which in the Latin is 'episcopus', and in the Greek, 'episkopos', which is to be translated as, overseer, watcher." Sister Mary Cynthia, on behalf of the Anglican Church, appeared pacified by the explanation.

Sister Monica Joan was indeed the overseer. And Delia – Patsy was intrigued to note – was her assistant.

It was Delia who went down to collect the eggs (promised by a grateful local grocer, whose first grandson had been delivered not three weeks earlier); Delia who carefully carried them in crates back to Nonnatus House. Well – Delia roped Patsy in for the second trip, with the comment that Patsy "so rarely put those long arms to good use". Patsy caught her meaning: no-one else did.

It was Delia, too, who, under the supervision of Sister Monica Joan, boiled job lots of eggs in the kitchen. Sister Monica Joan patrolled the perimeter, warding off anyone who might dare make an approach on the eggs. When she was not patrolling, she talked to Delia. Patsy wondered what they discussed during the several hours the whole process took. She wondered from a distance, after attempting to put on the kettle for a pot of tea, and being shooed out of the area "for lurking, like the mongoose, that most notorious thief of eggs". Delia smiled and shrugged her shoulders as Patsy backed away, tea-less.

And it was Delia too – mostly – who decorated the eggs. Mostly, because Barbara and Tom Hereward did, initially, offer to assist. Barbara's attempt was declared "fair", but Tom's was "devoid of all artistic merit". Sister Monica Joan did not believe in softening the blow of her criticism, it seemed. Tom was invited to leave the painting table after his first egg; after going to the effort of another two, Barbara took pity on him and took him off to the cinema.

So that left Delia. And a mound of eggs, and paint. Delia didn't seem to mind. Her abilities with an egg-painting brush were considerably better than her skills with a sewing needle. She worked – Sister Monica Joan 'overseeing' on the colour scheme – for quite some time, turning out several rows of brightly colour eggs – striped, crossed, mostly in reds, yellows and greens. (Tom's mistake, it later transpired, had been to go too heavy on the blue.) This was the scene that greeted Patsy when she came in.

Just then, Delia put the finishing touches to another one. "An egg fit for a Russian prince! I discern Faberge blood in you!" Sister Monica Joan pronounced.

Patsy was – Delia vouched for her – permitted to attempt a few eggs, which were deemed "quite satisfactory".

But Sister Monica Joan insisted on hiding the eggs herself. She explained that it was so Delia, too, might participate in the hunt. Delia thought that, with the right sort of team, that might be rather fun.

* * *

So on the day of the hunt, long-promised, Delia and Patsy make up a team. Although mostly they just amble around the outside of the hall, making sure no children go too far off, and arguments over egg totals don't degenerate into fights (as Barbara had absent-mindedly noted that morning, a hardboiled egg would make quite a good weapon, really – just the sort of thing that David could have slung at Goliath).

Sister Monica Joan sits, bishop-like, on a chair on the stage in the hall, where she will collect egg tallies. When the baskets are returned. If any eggs are found. So far, the eggs are yet to be found.

Patsy and Delia, in their 'team', find themselves around the back of the hall. Delia insists on Patsy wearing the ears (rabbit? donkey? some strange hybrid of the two?) she remembers so warmly from last Easter throughout the hunt. Patsy is their team mascot, she explains.

Patsy wonders why Sister Monica Joan is so fond (because fondness is probably the term here) of Delia. Delia, of course, gets on with everyone, is kind to everyone, is always interesting and bright and endearing. Patsy knows she may be biased, but doesn't think that is too far off the mark – not really. But it is still strange that Sister Monica Joan should take to her so easily and so genuinely, and without the sometimes biting critique she likes to throw into her interactions with others at Nonnatus House.

So Delia explains it.

"It's because we've both been worried – about not being useful."

"Not useful?"

"When I was back in Wales, after the accident, I wasn't useful at all. I wasn't allowed to do anything. Mam treated me like cut glass."

Patsy takes her hand, and rubs the space between Delia's thumb and forefinger, sympathetically.

"And I got better. But Christ, it was frustrating, just sitting there, and watching everyone go about doing the things you know exactly how to do, but can't. And Sister Monica Joan understood that, and we talked about it, a bit."

A pause.

"And maybe, too, at the start, when I came here, I was worried that everyone only tolerated me - for the sake of you. That's what I thought, at first. That Sister Julienne takes in waifs and strays – and me, for your sake, as your friend. And I was so happy to be back with you, back in London, that I didn't mind that. Well, obviously I don't think they think that any more. But at the time…" Delia trails off, rapidly.

Patsy cannot quite understand how anyone as brilliant and quick as Delia could be so wrong.

"I never knew – I am sorry, Deels. I wish you'd told me. I wish I'd thought to ask."

"You weren't to know, and I never told you. And you weren't the problem, ever – just me. Besides, I don't feel like that any longer. I haven't for a long time."

"What did Sister Monica Joan say to you, then?"

"You know, I can't really remember. She speaks in riddles a lot of the time, and they're hard to recall. She talked a lot about attending to what love requires of us. And about finding worth in unexpected places."

Patsy nods. "That seems like good advice."

"Oh", Delia adds, "and she also thinks she's descended from a line of druidic bards. So we discussed that a bit, too, and what I knew about the maintenance of sacred oak and ash groves."

"Which was unsurprisingly little, I imagine."

"You'd be surprised, Patience Mount, at my knowledge of sacred groves."

"Go on then."

"Oh, Sister Monica Joan and I also agreed that we can't possible tell someone who's not an initiate into the mysteries", Delia replies, with a lofty air.

Patsy wishes she had a hardboiled egg of her own to throw at Delia. In the absence of a projectile weapon, she kisses her instead. Quickly. By the bins. Fluffy ears still attached.

* * *

As it turns out – and it takes almost an hour of fruitless, eggless, hunting for it to turn out this way – the eggs aren't there at all.

This is not because Sister Monica Joan - or Sweep - failed to perform the appointed task.

In fact, a rather breathless mother (Mrs Jacobs, or is it Mrs Andrews – Patsy can't quite put a name to her) rushes in to the hall, three boys dragged along behind her. Mrs Jacobs (probably) opens the large handbag she is carrying to reveal nearly the whole clutch of painted eggs, nestled inside. The boys skulk. The rest of the eggs have been – rather unceremoniously – lobbed around her kitchen in a fight between her sons which she had only interrupted 20 minutes earlier. It seems – for all the words Mrs Jacobs can get out of them, and that isn't much, they're not talkative – that they'd seen Sister Monica Joan in the hall the previous day, and followed her round, picking up each egg almost as soon as she'd hidden each one away.

When it all comes out, Sister Monica Joan and Sister Winifred both look vindicated. Which, given the earlier exchange of dirty looks between them during the unsuccessful egg hunting, is perhaps the best possible outcome.

The eggs are distributed – and perhaps this is better, anyway – each child gets to pick an egg from the handbag. They linger quite as long as Sister Monica Joan ever did on the designs.

When they're done, and the hall is tidied away, and locked (premises thoroughly checked for the Jacobs boys), it is time to return to Nonnatus House. And as they set off in the mild weather, Patsy vows to herself to make sure that Delia never feels merely _tolerated_. Perhaps the only way to do that is to ask more, to say more and do more. And she thinks, quite possibly, they could all do with showing a little more than toleration to Sister Monica Joan too.

But Delia – bright, quick, clever Delia – is already far ahead of her. Delia takes Sister Monica Joan's arm and links it through her own.

"Alas, I am not able to think of a poem appropriate to the occasion. St Augustine stole pears, it is true, but never eggs."

"There must be something, Sister", Delia prompts. "Isn't there – I heard it in school, I think – one about eggs that break open, and birds hatching out, who 'make the April woods merry with singing'?"

Bright, quick, clever and with a far better memory than her own – Patsy adds that to the list. She also mentally calculates the distance between Poplar and the nearest woods, but says nothing.

Sister Monica Joan takes up the prompt. "Yes – yes, child, yes". And she goes one better, offering another verse, "'And in spite of our wisdom, and sensible talking; we on our feet must go plodding and walking.' Quite. A verse most apposite to the moment."

She turns to address Delia directly. "We have a poetic turn of mind, the two of us. It is our Welsh lineage, our bardic ancestry, I suspect."

Sister Winifred hears that. "Sister, you're from Kent, aren't you?"

Sister Monica Joan glares.

* * *

 **A/N: This is vaguely...festive, I think? It's not Easter here for another month. Too much Greek/Latin etymology? I know - impossible.  
**


	9. Spivs Come to Poplar

_Spiv: mid-20th century British slang term for a petty criminal or a black marketeer; typically someone who is also a flashy dresser. **  
**_

 **Chapter 9. In which Spivs Come to Poplar**

Delia spends three weeks on secondment to the chest ward at The London. After a week, she looks worried. She chews her nails. It's uncharacteristic - Delia is usually so buoyant, so cheerful, no sooner encountering an obstacle than plotting ways to overcome it. Patsy asks her what's wrong, but Delia insists it's nothing. She'd just prefer to be back on her ordinary duties, is all.

After two weeks, Delia decides she has to say something. She tries to pick her moment, but it ends up being just as she and Patsy are walking home after a bus ride back from The Gateways. Patsy suggested they go there precisely because Delia has spent the last week so quiet and so out of character. Delia is terrible at putting a brave face on things. Patsy frets.

Really, it's probably not the right time - but even three hours of dancing with what ought to have been reckless abandon hasn't driven it from her mind. Delia can't keep the thought to herself much longer.

"Pats, I wanted to talk to you about my secondment."

"Mm?"

"The cases I've seen on the ward. It'd make you shudder. Young men who can't breathe, wheezing as if they were a hundred years old. I saw a lung removed today; black like a smoked kipper."

"Darling". Patsy grips Delia's hand more tightly. "Only a week to go."

This isn't Delia's point.

"It's the cigarettes that are doing it. I know not everyone agrees, but I don't see how it can be anything else. If I ask you, will you try to quit - for me?"

"I'll try." As if to better underline Delia's point, Patsy coughs.

"It's so horrible. And I worry."

That's a difficult proposition to argue with.

"Really, Pats. I want you to be around for as long as possible. Around with me. With enough air in your lungs to go dancing."

Delia raises Patsy's hand to her mouth and kisses it softly. That combination of words and action - that's even more difficult to argue with.

No-one else in the world has ever said that to Patsy - has told her presence would be sought and wanted and longed for - not merely endured - indefinitely.

Patsy feels the same way, even if she doesn't say it out loud. She makes sure to put aside a small but not negligble sum from her pay packet each week. It's not particularly unusual - if anyone were to see her account book, they'd probably just think her prudent (Prudent Patience - all the virtues). And Patsy would tell anyone who enquired that she was saving it for 'the future' - safely non-specific. In this hypothetical conversation, she'd also tell the nosey interlocutor who's so concerned about finances at such a fine level of detail that it was entirely her personal business and to keep well out of it. But that wouldn't be entirely true. What she saves is marked - only in her head, of course - as set aside a for a future with Delia. Those two nouns - the future and Delia - are inextricably entwined, and Patsy will resist all attempts at separating them. Granted, she doesn't know exactly what that future looks like or what they'll want the money for. It's not the mapped out with the same kind of predictable, neat certainty as Tom and Barbara's future would be. But that's alright too. It's just a promise she keeps at the end of every week. So Patsy makes another promise - she promises to try to quit.

Delia follows up her wheedling with a threat. The threat is, that for each cigarette Patsy smokes in a day, she'll withhold a kiss.

"And how will that work, mathematically speaking? Are you counting?"

Delia admits she hasn't yet worked out the finer points.

* * *

Mr Gilbert is in London, visiting his daughter. Well, what's brought him down to London is actually a conference held by the Evangelical Society. Mr Gilbert is speaking about how northern churches have been raising money to fund improvements to sewers and sanitation. Patsy takes a look at him, taking a cup of tea at the table. He looks a little like an engraving of William Gladstone which she remembers from her history classes. If Gladstone had taken a lot less care over his dress. He's not badly dressed, exactly - it's more that the clothes he puts on each morning must be the last thing Mr Gilbert thinks about, if he thinks about them at all. He wears that attitude like a kind of uniform.

Mr Gilbert takes Barbara out for dinner. And, actually, arm in arm, and talking furiously, the two of them make sense together. Mr Gilbert is as busy and as good as Barbara. But he is austere and serious - quietly serious - where Barbara is lighthearted. Sister Mary Cynthia, who opened the door to him, and spent a few minutes talking to him, seems impressed by his thoughtfulness - and she is usually an impeccable judge of character.

Patsy has the sense that Mr Gilbert picked Liverpool because he thought missionary work elsewhere in the Empire might have been too easy. Barbara clearly has love and admiration for him. Patsy's not sure that Mr Gilbert completely recognises the core of iron in his daughter - or the new certainty in her - since she came to Poplar.

He is, in Patsy's estimation, a distant father, but a distinctly good man. How do those two balance out - how to weigh the public man against the private man? It is, Patsy reminds herself, none of her business at all.

When Mr Gilbert brings Barbara home (escorting her, carefully, through the streets of the East End which she cycles every day and some nights), he encounters Sister Winifred. Apparently, Barbara has mentioned to him Sister Winifred's attempts to convert prostitutes. This is a subject on which Mr Gilbert has many opinions, and, notwithstanding the fact that he is presenting a paper in Bloomsbury in the morning, he begins a long and earnest discussion with Sister Winifred. She seems both pleased and nervous that someone else shares her enthusiasm for the subject. Mr Gilbert's approach is rather more practical than Sister Winifred's, and rather blunter. The first step is truly open clinics, he thinks. Allow any woman to walk in, for any consultation on their health - no need to give a name or an address. There's no other way to get these women (he uses the phrase "these women", but it does not sound accusing or condemnatory) to access the help they might need. The state has no right to judge them, only to treat.

If he weren't in the church, Patsy would have him pegged as a radical socialist.

* * *

Delia is on a crusade for better chest health. She has, of course, confiscated Patsy's cigarettes. She tuts, audibly, when she sees anyone lighting up. It can be positively embarrassing in cafes, and disruptive of what ought to be surreptitious romantic assignations. She speaks vocally of the evils of tobacco, and writes to her dad about his pipe. Her approach is not the most subtle. At some social gathering or another, she manages to get onto the subject with Doctor Turner, who nods emphatically at each of her points. He nods most emphatically of all when Delia urges him that action needs to be taken.

He could not agree more. "What was the point of a the Clean Air Act if we allow people to go on poisoning themselves at home?"

Doctor Turner has, for some time, been thinking about doing something about it himself. An extra clinic is all very well, but he can only treat the symptoms, not the cause.

This is a man who only himself decided to put down the cigarettes 8 months ago. It's true, Delia thinks, a late convert is a fanatic. But she can't disagree with a word.

Doctor Turner begins with the parish Men's Group. After he has reeled off the statistics and presented some quite horrifying colour photographs, he tries to offer alternatives.

Next time you reach for a cigarette, try to find something else to do with yourself. Play sport. Take a walk. Take three deep breaths. Make a cup of tea. Play with your children.

Even cutting down by one or two a day, he urges them, will result in measurable, immediate improvements. And think of the money saved - enough for a pint or two.

The Men's Group murmurs, collectively teetering on the edge of being convinced. Possibly.

There's a small article about Doctor Turner's smoking cessation classes in the local paper. Mrs Turner cuts it out, presses it, saves it. "Local Doctor Tackles Tobacco" is the headline.

* * *

Patsy is at the clinic, checking some paperwork with Mrs Turner (she's been entrusted with that responsibility by Nurse Crane, who thinks Patsy is of a like mind when it comes to record keeping).

A very smart car pulls up outside, very loudly. Out of the car steps a small man. He is ostenatiously well dressed, with both a cravat and pocket handkerchief, and in thick pin-stripes, which does little for his stocky physique. He is the kind of man, whom, during the war, they would have called a spiv.

He enters the surgery and presents his card. Anthony Eden, Warfelt Tobacco. ("Not _the_ Anthony Eden!" he jokes, unctuously). There's something rather oily about him. He is, he says, in the area - hoping to educate local doctors about the reality of any supposed links between cigarettes and ill health.

Patsy and Mrs Turner share a quick look. Obviously, when they show Mr Eden into Doctor Turner's office, they remain there, standing either side of Doctor Turner. It's a meeting, not a private consultation. And they are both trained nurses - they have every reason in the world to be there.

Mr Eden places (perhaps 'slaps down' would better describe the emphatic action) what he calls a "report" on Doctor Turner's desk. "This conclusively disproves", he pronounces "any of your so-called claims that smoking has long-term consequences for health".

But he quite agrees, Mr Eden says, that education is needed about the health of the working man. To help the working man realise what's good for him. There's a great deal - a very great deal - of misinformation flying round nowadays, probably more than the Minister of Health himself could cope with! There must be a real effort from surgeries like this, in the heart of the traditional East End. (The tone is condescending, and Mrs Turner raps her fingers on the pile of case files she is still holding.)

And then, to the real business of it. First Mr Eden attempts politeness. You catch more flies with honey, after all.

He offers funding for a chest clinic, so long as Mr Turner agrees to end the smoking cessation sessions ("no good sending out mixed messages!"). Perhaps he might consider sampling the new 'lighter' line of cigarettes himself - their own studies have found it restorative for the weak and the housebound.

It's an argument which might have convinced in 1930, Patsy reflects, but no longer. The the word Distaval swims into her mind. They banned that quickly enough when the poison became evident.

Doctor Turner is not convinced either. But it is Mrs Turner who speaks. "That's quite enough, thank you". Her voice is clipped, and it is evident that this is the end of the conversation, and the signal for Mr Eden and all he peddles to leave.

Politeness having failed, Mr Eden becomes more blunt. He ignores Mrs Turner's intervention. "Look, doc, I'll level with you - you can't be holding these anti-cigarette meetings. Not on NHS time."

"It's not NHS time, Mr Eden. I do it after hours, I don't charge for it, it's something I discuss with other men at the parish Men's Group. There's no crime in that."

"So the church is involved too?" Mr Eden shakes his head, marvelling at the wrong-headedness of it all. "Look. Look. What you're doing here is slander. You're saying things which aren't true."

"What we're doing here is making people informed of medical research."

Mrs Turner intervenes again. "You seem, Mr Eden, very afraid to let people make up their own minds."

Patsy and Mrs Turner escort Mr Eden out and to his fancy car, one at each side, to ensure he leaves. As it happens, Barbara and Mr Gilbert are walking past at the same time. Mr Gilbert is dressed in his vicar's cloth.

Mr Eden sees this and sidles up to him, apparently under the impression that he's the local vicar and has some say over the activities of the parish Men's Group. He reaches into his bag for another copy of the "report".

Identifying himself as a tobacco manufacturer to Mr Gilbert is, without question, a terrible decision. Mr Gilbert does not correct Mr Eden on the location of his parish. Instead, he launches into a long diatribe of the conditions of the dockers working for the tobacco importers in Liverpool. The rhetoric is fiery. He's outraged. He goes through the hours, the wages, the exploitation, the working conditions, the sinful con-trick that makes it all possible. He is not loud but brooks no interruption. For every favourable figure about tobacco's health-giving properties contained in Mr Eden's "report", Mr Gilbert has four more damning ones at his fingertips. His mind is organised more efficiently than Nurse Crane's filing system.

Mr Gilbert takes a breath in the course of his oratory and Mr Eden tries to escape. Mr Gilbert does not let him, but proceeds to the conditions of tobacco growers and tobacco plantations overseas. The unchristian beggary to which profiteering tobacconists like him reduce them.

Barbara is nodding as if she's heard this before. And looking on with pride and love, more evident than ever.

Good show Mr Gilbert. The - very polite, very respectable, very precise - tirade is almost enough to make one feel sorry for Mr Eden. Almost.

Mr Gilbert takes his copy of the so-called report back with him to Liverpool. It looks like he plans to annotate it and publish something on all its inaccuracies.

Mrs Turner takes their copy home. It's exactly the right thickness to go under the one uneven leg of the kitchen table to stop it wobbling.

* * *

And, eventually, Patsy gives up. She's short tempered for about two months. Delia bears her snapping rather better than Trixie. But, on just one occasion, she decides she's had enough.

"Patience Mount, if you don't stop right now, I will murder you!"

"Then you might at least hand me a cigarette and let me murder myself."

Delia giggles. Patsy breaks into a smile.

"I'm sorry, I don't mean to be so awful."

"You're never awful. Just a bit tetchy sometimes. Besides, I'm touched that you decided to give up your vices for me."

She catches Delia's arm and pulls her close. "Not every vice."

* * *

 **A/N: I think this chapter might be a bit dogmatic/boring, and apologies if you find it so. It's of great concern to me that Patsy and Delia live long enough to enjoy the (slow and fitful) progress of social liberalisation in Britain. And I've got enough to worry about with random car accidents, without fretting about their developing chronic diseases. So the cigarettes have to go, I'm afraid.**

 **Coming soon (maybe, no guarantee): discussions of Paris.**


	10. The Things Not On The Postcard

**Chapter 10. The Things Not On The Postcard (Or, The Calvados and The Forest)**

"Go on then, I want to hear all about it. The sights, the romance, the Eiffel tower in the moonlight." Trixie makes herself comfortable on the bed, as if settling in for a long story (which, to be fair, she is). Her hand curls around a fresh mug of tea.

Patsy and Delia had only arrived back that afternoon.

Patsy sighs. "Really? We did send a postcard."

"For those of us who didn't go to Paris, and had to spend the week dealing with placental abruptions and fainting fathers, then yes, really, I do want to hear all about it. It's the least you could do. Besides, the postcard hasn't arrived yet. And you're back now, so no need to rely on the French postal service."

Patsy looks at Trixie and frowns. "It'll ruin the postcard."

It's not that she's too tired to relive the holiday for Trixie – although perhaps she could try that as an excuse. It's just that she's not entirely comfortable with offering up all the details which – no doubt – Trixie wants. And Trixie wants to hear about them because – apart from genuine interest, and her own dreams of European travel – she's a good friend; and friends take an interest. And, besides, there is no-one else in Nonnatus House (no-one else in the world, bar Delia, come to that), who would happily ask Patsy about the heady romance of her trip to Paris with another nurse who simply happened to be a close friend.

Or else, anyone who asked about romance would be asking whether Patsy had locked eyes with some handsome, excessively-cologned fellow named Jacques whilst standing in the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe.

But Patsy isn't an open book: never has been, never will be. She loves Trixie dearly, but that doesn't mean she wants to tell her everything. No – that makes it sound like something bad or untoward happened; which it didn't. It was all perfectly pleasant – better than pleasant - wonderful. Miraculous. A week of their own.

But turning that into a narrative was actually, well, quite difficult. Maybe because it had been so miraculous – trying to put it into words would only make it seem less real, more like a mirage.

"Ha! I can imagine your postcards, Patsy. Written especially for the nuns. 'Having a wonderful time; weather lovely; food terrific, à bientôt'. That doesn't exactly cover the topics I want to know about."

This is, actually, rather close to what Patsy did write – although, in her defence, the weather wasn't completely lovely – it had rained a bit. And they'd added something about visiting Notre Dame because they thought it might be of professional interest to the sisters.

If Patsy didn't tell Trixie, she would probably get the information out of Delia anyway. And while Delia was bound to be more forthcoming, to provide all the detail Trixie craved, describe each day vividly, and take the job of it away from Patsy, Delia was also bound to exaggerate everything. She… editorialised. Which was charming, of course, in its own way, and bound to make people laugh, but there were one or two details which Patsy didn't really want revealed to Trixie, or she'd go on about them – forever.

"Alright." Patsy takes a deep breath.

"Well - go on! Where did you stay?"

An easy question to begin with.

"A place across from the Île de la Cité. You could hear the bells of Notre Dame from our room."

Because it wasn't yet summer, the view from their window had been enveloped in mist in the mornings, so you could hear the bells several hours before the air cleared and you were able to see them. The room was at the top: two beds but both actually quite large, when you put it to the test.

"That sounds terribly romantic. Just like _Roman Holiday_."

Patsy is about to ask exactly what part of the experience so far described sounds like _Roman Holiday_ : there were no scooters, she was not a crown princess nor was Delia a reporter. Nor is Paris often taken for Rome. She'd about to say just this, when –

"Patsy. This is the City of Romance – stop being so tight-lipped! I want to hear about the smoky little bars I'm sure you visited." Trixie is exasperated. She'd make an impatient interrogator.

"We did see the Eiffel Tower."

Just then, Patsy is saved from providing further details by the sudden shout of "FIRE! FIRE!" from downstairs.

(Saved is perhaps a relative term.)

The two of them rush out onto the landing, where there's smoke.

It's not a great deal of smoke, not enough to obscure the landing completely, and there's no sign of a fire up here. And, as they walk towards the stairs, there's no growing heat. By the time they reach the bottom step, next to the door, and there's still no inferno - not even a lick of flame - Trixie is not particularly alarmed, more put out at the interruption.

Patsy attempts to enter the kitchen, where the smoke seems to be coming from – or at least, where the cloud is thicker – but is ushered back by Nurse Crane who tells her to keep out, and snaps that she has the situation entirely under control. As if offended that Patsy would question her fire-fighting skill. "In the case of conflagration, Nurse Mount, many hands do not make light work!" And, rather forcefully (surprisingly forcefully), Patsy is pushed back, to wait with Trixie.

The proper thing to do would be to step outside – for safety's sake. But Trixie's just put her hair up for the night and she's only thought to grab a robe to wrap around her, and it's not really warm enough to evacuate. Besides, it's still light enough outside that she'll attract the (distinctly humourless) comments of men sloping home from the pub.

So they loiter by the door for a few minutes. Barbara comes to join them. She's a little worried: she'd been cleaning her instruments an hour or so before; what if she'd somehow left the sterilising alcohol too close to the autoclave and caused some sort of combustion reaction? She bites her lip and wonders if she shouldn't go and see – if it's her fire, it's her job to put it out.

"Don't fret so, Barbara - it's coming from the kitchen. I'll bet it's Sister Monica Joan trying to make a cake again. As if we didn't tell her off enough last time!", Trixie complains.

Patsy, more practically, wonders when Nonnatus House last had a fire drill. Probably not for years; probably when the Luftwaffe were still circling the skies; probably when Nonnatus House was located in a different building altogether.

After a few minutes, Nurse Crane comes into the hallway – out from the kitchen – frowning.

As it turns out, Sister Monica Joan was quite innocent.

The culprit is Sister Winifred, who, coming in after a very long day and having missed dinner, forgot about the toast she'd put under the grill and went off to Compline.

The small fire was put out, due to the brisk and efficient action from Nurse Crane. However, she's going to have a word with Fred about keeping some buckets of sand and thick towels around. (As it turns out, there used to be a sand bucket stored in the corner of the kitchen, but Fred had 'borrowed' it for a Civil Defence drill some months ago.)

Sister Winifred looks deeply, profoundly relieved that Nurse Crane seems most animated about the provision of appropriate fire-fighting equipment, rather than her own part in the evening's excitement.

The smoke takes a long time to dissipate, given the relative smallness of the fire. Patsy is put on duty swinging the front door back and forth in an attempt to waft the smoke outside. It's a thick door; standing there at the threshold pushing it forward and back – to almost negligible effect, she might add – makes her feel a little like King Kong swinging off the Empire State Building.

Sister Monica Joan is most concerned with the fact that smoke might have entered the television set and in some way interfered with the working; or the high temperatures have warped its inner components. She's dusting it down with a towel, which doesn't seem to be doing very much good – but probably isn't doing it much harm either.

Trixie was right though; they had ended up in a smoky little bar.

* * *

"So", says Barbara, in a most uninterrogation-like manner, "what was the Eiffel Tower like?"

"The thing about the Eiffel Tower", Delia explains, "is although it's very big, it's surprisingly hard to find when you're walking around on the ground."

Barbara looks slightly confused.

"We got lost. Pats' skills at reading maps are not what they should be – not after however-many years in the scouts."

In the end, after forty minutes of walking, seeing the Tower looming above the rooftops, but not getting any nearer to them – whichever direction they walked in - they'd decided to take a taxi.

Delia, no longer trusting Patsy's French (they had, after all, asked a number of people for directions), had conducted a conversation with the taxi driver in broken English.

As it turned out, the driver spoke English quite well: he'd spent some time as merchant sailor, so knew the London docks like the back of his hand. It was in London he'd met his wife – French, but her family displaced by the war, lived in England from the age of ten until their marriage, to the extent she still spoke her native tongue with a slight cockney twist.

There'd been a long discussion in which he asked which pubs were still standing, and whether they knew them. (They knew some of them, it turned out. He'd made further recommendations for the ones to visit and the ones to avoid.)

And after he'd driven them to the Eiffel Tower, and then on to the Tuileries, (he'd insisted; it had begun to pour down) he'd invited them around for dinner – with his wife and his mother and his child.

Patsy had really not been sure it was a good idea; but Delia had already accepted. Besides, she couldn't really voice her objections discreetly when the driver spoke such good English.

And he'd afterwards invited them to a bar, a tiny bar. Telling them that anything along the river was just for tourists.

In the bar, Delia had tried Calvados (the taxi driver was originally from Normandy; he'd insisted - claiming it was better than any English cider). It was really rather pleasant; it gave you the sensation of being warmed from the inside out.

The night had ended with Delia learning several (entirely inappropriate, really quite blue) French songs.

She half-sings, half-speaks a snippet of one for Barbara.

Barbara, whose French is miles better than Delia's (because her family once played host to a visiting Lutheran minister from Alsace for two months), recognises a many more of the words than Delia (who's just learnt the song phonetically).

When she does recognise them, and what Delia is singing, Barbara blushes, violently.

* * *

Sister Monica Joan, they both anticipate, will be full of questions about French patisserie. In fact, they brought her back a small packet of macarons: they were frightfully expensive, but she recognises them with a connoisseur's eye and is nothing less than delighted. As a token of her appreciation, she even offers them one each.

But what Sister Monica Joan really wants to hear about is the Palace of Versailles; where they'd gone on their last full day in the city.

As it turns out, Sister Monica Joan has spent the past week reading _A Tale of Two Cities_ (in tribute to their holiday), and enthusiastically talks about the French Revolution and lopping off the heads of tyrants.

"Which is not something our order endorses", Sister Julienne reminds her.

Delia rather suspects that, over the past week, Sister Monica Joan has been talking rather a lot about the French Revolution. That would explain the slightly harassed expression on Sister Julienne's face, and the revolutionary tinge to Sister Monica Joan's voice. Apparently (they're told later, by Barbara), there'd also been quite a lot of discussion about the magical powers ascribed to handkerchiefs dipped in the blood of Louis XVI. Sister Monica Joan did not hold one jot with such superstition, but this hadn't prevented her from raising it – as a curiosity – at the dinner table.

"We did it too", Nurse Crane reminds her. (She means that we English also did chopping heads off; not the handkerchief business). "And you may not think me Christian to say so, Sister, but I've always thought that Charles I quite deserved it. All that facial hair – there's something quite sinister about a man with such a straggly beard."

"But the palace!" Sister Monica Joan insists.

The best thing about the Palace of Versailles is not its function as a museum, but its gardens; its long, long gardens; where, every so often, you'd stumble across a classical statue and spend five minutes wondering which Roman god it was meant to represent, and whether it was really in the right place, or waiting to be moved somewhere else.

(Also, the fresh air had allowed Delia to walk off her Calvados-induced headache.)

The gardens are so large, and the topiary and rows of orange trees rise so high (in the service of historical authenticity) that it allows you to get the feeling that you're completely alone. That you could stroll, arm in arm, for hours, without coming upon a soul – not even a gardener.

And so they did. Aimlessly – or, not quite aimlessly; only being guided by the layout of the gardens.

"It sounds very beautiful" says Sister Mary Cynthia. And they both agree.

Eventually, Sister Julienne, Sister Mary Cynthia and Nurse Crane have left the room. Delia is still answering Sister Monica Joan's questions about the palace – from what she remembers. She's being asked to describe the Hall of Mirrors in particular detail.

Delia gives it her best attempt at recall, but is finally forced to concede. "I'm afraid we spent more time in the gardens, sister. But we could probably find you a book about it – which would be more accurate than my descriptions, anyway." She doesn't add that as they walked around the palace, she was still feeling the effects of the evening before. When your head is already spinning slightly, a hall full of mirrors is not a location where you ought to linger for long.

"In the gardens?"

"Yes – well, partly by accident, because Patsy got us lost in the woods, right at the end of the gardens, miles away from the palace."

"And you were too caught in a pastoral reverie to notice you had strayed from the path?"

"Yes, that's probably fair." Delia grins to admit her own culpability in the escapade.

"Indeed, that is nothing to be ashamed of, for our greatest poets were often lost and wandering about the forest."

Sister Monica Joan pauses for a minute, and Delia guesses that she is on the verge of reciting some particularly appropriate verse about wanderers lost in the forest.

That's not quite the thought uppermost in Sister Monica Joan's mind.

"But tell me, while you were lost in this forest, did Nurse Mount hang poems proclaiming her love from the branches of the trees, like Orlando for his Rosalind?"

Before they can compose themselves enough to answer, Sister Monica Joan rises, surprisingly sprightly, from her chair, and leaves the room.

* * *

 **A/N: I do some of my best work on Calvados (a delicious apple brandy from Normandy).**

 **My very great thanks for all the continuing reviews - very much appreciated, and I feel like I probably don't say that enough! So: thanks.**

 **Coming next: Delia and Barbara are very, very bored.**


	11. The Most Boring Game

**Chapter 11. The Most Boring Game in The World**

"Do you think", wonders Barbara, "that this might be the most boring game ever invented?"

Delia pauses before answering. "It's certainly in the top three. But I might not be the best judge. I've never understood why everyone at Nonnatus House enjoys Monopoly so much."

"When I was little, my father used to say that Monopoly was a teaching tool. About the way in which the propertied classes perpetuate social injustices."

"That can't have been very much fun, Barbara."

"Oh, no, it could be quite jolly. It makes you feel a bit better about losing if you can blame it on inescapable social injustice."

"And...do we know who's losing here?"

"I'm not sure. I think the ones doing the batting."

"They're...Middlesborough? Middlesex?"

"I thought one side was Nottinghamshire and the others were Somerset. No, that can't be right. Maybe it's on the tickets. I can't see the scoreboard from here."

Barbara rummages around in her bag, looking for the tickets, while Delia cranes to see the scoreboard from their seats. "I didn't think to ask - Tom said it would be easy to pick up what was happening."

"I thought men of the cloth were always meant to tell the truth."

A purple-faced man in a linen suit and overlarge sunhat coughs loudly and scowls at them. It's not clear whether he resents the impugning of the good name of the church or the interruption to play (although, really, there's not that much to interrupt).

"Sorry!" hisses Barbara. She tries to rummage more quietly, entirely unsuccessfully.

Cricket is not a game very welcoming to newcomers.

Delia and Barbara are here (at the ground? the pitch? the lawn?) by virtue of a very long series of concatenations and coincidences. Or, really, just one. Tom had long wanted to see the match (whoever these teams were, betwixt them stood some ancient rivalry, apparently). He'd bought the tickets, invited Barbara, and then - at the very last minute - been called to a meeting with the archdeacon (in spiritual emergencies, the wind bloweth where it listeth, and The Almighty has scant regard for the prior claims of competitive sporting fixtures). Barbara had been left with two tickets: Delia had the day off and no particular plans.

"I thought it would be more like rounders", Barbara whispers. "Rounders is always exciting to watch. I think the shape of a rounders bat makes it a harder game than cricket, actually."

Their purple-faced neighbour (if Delia were here in a professional capacity, she'd have a polite word about the dangers of gout and maintenance of a reasonable blood pressure) seems, if anything, to turn more puce at this remark. At the same time as pretending entirely to ignore their conversation, he shakes his head as if overhearing some great act of blasphemy.

It strikes Delia that cricket is one of rare games which is probably exactly as boring to play as it is to watch. Both she and Barbara appear to have skipped that part of their cultural and social formation which would have taught them how to romanticise the game. She'd heard Tom speaking, misty-eyed about the thwack of... _something_... on willow. But watching, or, at least, staring at the game and trying to watch, all that struck Delia was that whoever was washing the whites at the end of the game was going to be set to a lot of work.

It's not even particularly warm; certainly not warm enough for it just be a pleasure to sit here and ignore the running round of men with bats in favour of basking in the sun. In fact, it's started to drizzle. England, thinks Delia. How very English to invent a game which lasts forever and requires several days of interrupted sunshine to complete.

The drizzle intensifies, and the arch of the roof does not quite shield them from it.

"Come on Barbara, get up. I saw somewhere we can sit out the rain."

Barbara offers no objections. The puce-faced man in the hat does not appear sorry to see his new friends leave.

Delia takes them into a pub across the road from the ground, The Rose and Crown. It is the sort of small, smoky place filled with those who remember the past two wars and where talk of the most obscure rules of competitive sport weaves in and out of the tendrils of smoke. It is, in short, the domain of men. Barbara sits at a table, and Delia brings back two pints.

"Perhaps this is where we've been going wrong. Cricket is best enjoyed a little bit sozzled. But I've heard all about your first night at Nonnatus. Small sips!"

* * *

The second pint.

"You know, I think I might almost be ready to go back and brave that man in the hat again. Or, quite possibly, sleep through the rest of the match."

"My theory", begins Delia, "is that learning to appreciate cricket is like ingesting poison. If you take a small amount at a time, you can build up a resistance."  
Barbara surprises Delia with her next question.

"Delia, are you happy?"

"That's a very profound question for one o'clock in the afternoon at The Rose and Crown."

But Delia thinks about it anyway. Delia thinks of everything she has. It's strange, because to the outside observer, that probably doesn't look like so much. She hasn't even got her health, as her mother keeps reminding her.

"Yes. I'm happy." Her father always said that if you had the time to think about whether you're happy, you're better off than most, and so you ought to be happy just for that reason alone.

"And - you're not bored being here with me? I mean, besides the cricket."

Barbara, it turns out, had been asking about Delia's happiness in the particular moment of that afternoon, not in any general or more abstract sense. Delia's pause before answering seems to have caused her to fret.

"Not at all - why'd you ask?"

"Well, I dragged you along today. And it's not very exciting - I'm not sure I suggest exciting trips. Most of the time I just sort of tag along. I tagged along with my father as a parish assistant and now with you and Patsy and Trixie."

"Don't talk like that. I think the cricket is having a bad effect on you." Delia brings her glass down on the table for emphasis.

"The three of you are just so effortlessly - I don't know, exciting. Glamorous, even. And I - I talk about rounders! I sometimes think I have more in common with Sister Winifred or Sister Mary Cynthia."

Delia thinks about Barbara's notion of glamour. Trixie who found it in a glass, and then the glass became a crutch. Patsy who is so put together, so unafraid of the world, but wakes in the night with tremors, and avoids certain words and certain subjects. The two of them both chasing after the things they think they should be in the faces they present to the world. Delia does it too, of course - it's just hers are smaller adjustments. They're adjustments none the less.

"Barbara, you're terrific. And that you correctly recognise cricket as an unbearably boring game only shows what an interesting person you are."

* * *

On the third pint.

"Delia?"

"Yes?"

"You know my bicycle?"

"Bicycles aren't exactly my favourite topic of conversation, Barbara."

"Oh no, sorry. That was insensitive. But I've been thinking about how to improve it. The bicycle. Do it up!"

Delia's confusion is evident. "Is there something wrong with it?"

This truly is not her favourite topic of conversation. Get back on the horse as soon as possible after you fall off, people say. Maybe she will; but she certainly wouldn't want to be discussing the softness of the new leather saddle and nosebag to be bought for the horse who'd just thrown her.

Horses are much more trustworthy, anyway. If something's wrong with a horse, it lets you know - whinneying, braying. Bicycles don't. They just wait to catch you out. Just when you're feeling happiest and safest.

She tunes back into what Barbara is saying.

"Our bikes are so functional. I don't mind it being old, but it looks so shabby. Especially with the new uniforms, it would be nice to have something with a little more panache."

"Panache?"

Panache is not a word Delia associates with vehicles of any kind. A bicycle can no more have panache than a bus can be flamboyant.

Barbara misses the note of consternation and her enthusiasm picks up. "And if it were more distinctive, it would help me find it, too. If it were dark or there were lots of bicycles around. If I were in a place with lots of bicycles. A railway station, for example." Barbara falls silent, trying to think of other situations involving throngs of bicycles.

"You seem to have put a lot of thought into this, Barbara. Perhaps we should skip the cricket and go to a paint shop."

* * *

Delia is not exactly drunk, but she will admit to being tipsy when they return. She pokes her head around the door, sees Patsy reclining on the bed, reading, no sign of Trixie. She pulls Patsy off the bed and up to her in a single motion.

"Someone's been drinking." Not said disapprovingly, just a statement of fact.

"Yes, but I'm not drunk, just pleased to see you. I've been longing for you all day."

"As flattering as that is-". Patsy tucks a rogue strand of Delia's hair behind her ear.

"Oh it's not meant to be flattering, it's the truth."

"Deels-"

Delia hand traces the outline of Patsy's chin.

"You have such an effect on me. Like in that song, You Go To My Head..."

"The song in which love is compared to inebriation? That may not be the wisest analogy for you to pick at this moment."

"Listen. Listen. What I'm trying to say is that even if I hadn't drunk several pints, I'd still be doing this. I'd be doing it all my life if I could."

"That would be a loss to nursing." But Patsy is smiling.

"That cricket match was so boring. So very very boring. And I was trying to remember what it reminded me of, and then I realised, it's when I was 15 or 16 and stepping out with boys at home, because I thought that's what I should be doing. And it was like watching all those men on the cricket pitch, running up and down, inventing their own little rules, being present, but having absolutely no interest in the action."

"Mm, poor thing." (It's not clear whether Patsy is referring to the sterility of Delia's teenage would-be wooers or her suffering at the cricket match today. Perhaps both.)

"It was as if they thought all they needed to do was tick off these actions - walk around the village, take me to the cinema, buy me a cup of tea, and I'd fall at their feet. It was so boring, Pats."

"You've mentioned that once or twice."

"And that's what I thought it had to be like. Going through the motions. The sheer unending dullness of it all. Until - well. You - you're not. You're never boring. Never ever."

"Very eloquent." But Patsy is still smiling.

There's a noise outside. It interrupts them. A fox? A rat? A unregistered mother giving birth on the steps?

"Oh - we should check Barbara is alright. She said she just wanted a minute outside."

* * *

Barbara Gilbert is painting her bicycle. At this time of night. She's kneeling down with bike leaning against railings, applying a coat of royal blue paint, from a can she found in Fred's shed. There's a torch next to her, to help with the fine detail work.

"Oh Christ" is Patsy's first observation. Then - "Delia, you know what happened on her first night - how could you let her get drunk like this?"

"But she's not. Drunk, I mean. I had three pints, but she switched to orange juice after the first. She's not had anything to drink since one o'clock this afternoon. Which she followed with a scotch egg and a sausage roll."

The real question, Delia thinks, is where Barbara found such a shade of paint, for it's far too bold to have been used on any paint jobs inside Nonnatus House.

"Patsy!" Barbara waves the paintbrush enthusiastically in the half-light. She demonstrates an enthusiasm for painting in the semi-darkness which she never showed for cricket.

"After Delia gave me this idea, I thought I'd paint it tonight. No time like the present."

She's entirely sober, and she's actually done quite a neat job. And has thought to put on an apron to prevent paint splashes, and newspaper on the ground. Apart from the (obvious) blue of the bike, there'll be no trace left of her activity.

These seems nothing to do but help her, really. So Delia goes to the shed to see if she can find another paintbrush.

* * *

Fred notices, of course.

"Gosh, it must have been a vandal." Barbara betrays a winsome miscomprehension of the nature of crime in London.

Delia adds, "they were probably disturbed before they could get to the other bikes. That's lucky."

"I'll have it fixed for you by the end of the day, Nurse Gilbert. There's a spare somewhere you can borrow in the meantime."

"Oh no Fred, don't do that!"

Fred looks surprised - whether that's by the strident note in Barbara's voice, or simply the puzzling fact that he is in trouble at Nonnatus House for volunteering to do work, rather than for postponing it for want of the proper tool.

Delia pitches in: "you can't very well do Barbara's bicycle today because you promised you'd take a look at my wobbly shelf first, and then the floorboards at the top of the stairs. I swear there's something living under them."

* * *

Barbara will always defend the blue bike. Fred never gets around to fixing it (or, rather, when he suggests working off the blue coat and repainting it in something more appropriate, it happens that Barbara has a long list of additional district rounds and duties which cannot possibly be completed without it). She insists that it cuts about five minutes off her work day every day, being so easily able to identify it from afar.

Even Delia has to admit, really, it does have panache.

* * *

 **A/N: Come on, cricket _is_ boring. And it turns out my terrible teenage "dates" were not totally useless after all.**

 **Next time: Craft with Fred**


	12. The Regeneration Game

**Chapter 12. The Regeneration Game**

Perhaps the problem is that Fred has never quite grasped the less-than-positive connotations of the phrase "jack of all trades". Or maybe he's just not heard the second part of the expression, "master of none". It's not a compliment. It speaks, at best to competency, at worst to a delusional over-estimation of one's own skills.

Trixie, having spent most of the night and the small hours on a particularly difficult labour, with the clinic beginning in two hours, and with her complexion decidedly at risk from the weather and lack of sleep, had been hoping for an hour of rest. She realises that was an impossible dream when she hears the thumping and thudding coming from downstairs. It sounds like a struggle. Even Barbara isn't that clumsy when cleaning her equipment. Not anymore, at least. Trixie looks for something to put on to make her decent and sweeps discontentedly downstairs.

She finds Fred at the table, hitting at something small and square with chisel, and what looks like a pile of glass chips and rolling pin next to him. Violet, apparently, had not wanted him doing it at home - far too noisy; too likely to disturb business in the haberdashery.

Things go missing: large and small. We notice the large things first.

A large thing was noticed 18 months ago, when one of the last (not quite the last) sprawls of slum housing in Poplar was demolished. Now the new council flats, set around a courtyard garden, have sprung up in their place. This is regenerate, resurgent Poplar. It had taken long enough to fulfill those post-war promises about a bright new Jerusalem. But they had come to fruition in 1962.

The new Jerusalem includes a community garden, a space for children to play, and, behind it, a long whitewashed wall.

After many hours of earnest, frank discussion in council chambers, it's been decided that a community mosaic should cover the whitewashed wall. It will celebrate the spirit of the old East End in the new East End of proper indoor plumbing and central heating. The best of both worlds. Fred has (somehow, Trixie doesn't like to ask how) got the commission to put the design onto the wall. It will be a nice little earner. So he's using the rolling pin and chisel to break up small tiles of coloured glass for the mosaic, because he needs some non-square and smaller pieces.

Trixie wonders if he shouldn't be cutting them with scissors of some specialised kind; if there are not proper tools and machinery you could use for that job. But she says nothing.

Jack of all trades, master of none.

* * *

Things go missing: small and large. And you can't replace them.

Patsy thinks of Sister Monica Joan mourning Sister Evangelina. Most of it is silent. But yesterday morning, Sister Monica Joan had sobbed when she discovered someone - Mrs B? - had thrown away the mug which Sister Evangelina had always used. It had been chipped anyway, with a long crack running down the handle. You diced with danger when you drank from it.

This morning Patsy has been assisting in the maternity home. Attending a mother whose last child - which Patsy had also delivered, at home - had been stillborn. The mother and her husband were very clear that this new daughter was not a replacement for their last. But it was a second chance. They'd missed the first.

Cycling back, Patsy stops for a moment, as she has done three or four times in the past few weeks, outside a jewellers. It is a small, elegant, unflashy place. And, just has she has done three or four times in the past few weeks, she looks into the display window, but not at anything in particular.

At some point - during the crash, and the memory loss, and the rest of it - at some point during all that, Delia's ring, the ring Patsy had given her, had gone missing. A small thing that wasn't at first noticed.

Patsy didn't feel its loss (the old one had not been anything special, and she had other losses to feel); but she did think that Delia ought to have another one. But Delia had never expressed any desire for another ring. She'd never expressed any desire to be lavished with jewellery or gifts, or to have Patsy fuss over her like some doting husband. That was not how their relationship worked. She didn't expect, or want, Patsy to sweep her off her feet. Just to dance with her, sometimes.

Things go missing, small and large - and Patsy had the big thing back, so why this worry over the smallness of the ring? A sense of completeness, she supposes.

She's lost in this reverie for no more than a moment.

"Cheer up love, he's bound to pop the question sooner or later. Nice looking woman such as yourself."

It's the shop assistant (on a break, leaning back next to the window and smoking).

If she had more energy, she'd snort, toss her head back and walk off at his presumption. She hasn't the energy, so she offers up an expression which she hopes is implacable, unreadable.

For a moment, Patsy entertains a fantasy. She could get Trixie in on it, cook up an elaborate story. The two of them could go into the jewellers (not this one - not now with the shop assistant thinking she's pining through the window), and laugh and giggle and in the highest of high spirits announce that Patsy was looking for an engagement ring. Say that her fiance was working abroad, called urgently overseas, worked in iron bauxite mining (the more specific the lie, the less likely it will be questioned).

"Can you imagine", Trixie would whisper conspiratorially to the saleswoman, "a girl having to buy her own engagement ring! That wouldn't wash with me".

And they'd hand over the money and all would be well. It wouldn't be a no questions asked situation; but Trixie would disclose so much false information so gleefully and so plausibly that the saleswoman would entirely run out of questions.

And then Patsy catches herself, and feels faintly disgusted.

* * *

Fred is whistling as he applies grout to the wall. The tune is "I've been working on the railroad". He slaps it on with vigour. If you can tile a bathroom, you can make a mosaic. If you can make a mosaic, you can probably build a railroad too, if push comes to shove.

He pauses to consult the design.

The councillor who'd got him the job, Norris, was a good sort - the best - real old East End. A councillor now, but they'd grown up together - and done their service together too, during the war. A councillor now, but didn't put on any airs and graces - except for the slight affectation of the sovereign ring that he now wore on the little finger of his right hand, with the red stone set in it. Garnet, maybe.

The main thing though, was that Vi liked him (he and his wife had come over to dinner several times). And so when Norris had mentioned the work was going, Vi didn't get the look that she normally got when he told her about one of his "schemes" (her word). This was a proper job, with proper payment, all approved. Besides, he was getting paid to do something for the community. He'd make sure it was all up to scratch, no question of that. He and Norris had agreed that that was another reason for getting a local tradesman to do it.

"Craftsman, though, eh Fred."

"Eh?"

"Craftsman, mate. The word. Bit more sophisticated than tradesman. The image the Council's looking to project."

It wasn't that much different, though.

Fred was working from the design. He'd considered the different colours needed for each section, and roughly calculated the number of glass stone tiles (always allowing for some spare - he was a craftsman in attention to detail, but had a tradesman's recognition that measurements can't always be trusted).

The design had been chosen in a local competition. The winning design was four figures drawn in a childish hand (that wasn't an insult, the winning designer was a nine year old girl - it had a certain appeal to it). Four figures to represent the local area. A docker; what Fred supposed was a bus driver; a little girl and and a nun in her habit. All holding hands; and the nun at the end of the row with a baby in her free hand. Presenting all human life in Poplar in its infinite variety.

Sister Monica Joan was most greatly vexed that her design had not triumphed in the competition. For Fred's own sake, he was glad that she hadn't. It was a great elaborate thing with dolphins playing in the waves. Aside from the fact that Poplar wasn't known for its dolphins, and that it would have required at least six different shades of blue, the curving, twisting edges on those waves would have been very difficult to cut right. He'd be keeping rounded edges to a minimum, thank you.

Sister Mary Cynthia had also pointed out that, strictly speaking, it did not count as her own original design if Sister Monica Joan had simply traced her blueprint from a book entitled 'The Mosaics of Pompeii'.

Best of all, a nine year old's design also meant that the mosaic did not call for much detail work. Round blobs for faces, smaller circles for eyes, lines for smiles, no tricky teeth, and the figures mainly distinguished by the colour of their costumes.

Fred was starting on the docker, working left to right along the row.

He's done the docker's hair and is halfway through the face when he notices it. The docker's head is melting. The glass tiles are slowly sliding down the wall, in a very steady collapse. The few tiles which aren't sliding down are sinking deep into the grout, which he now thinks he may have slapped on too thickly and too freely. There are little glimpses of shine, but the pieces are slowly being sucked into the wall. For several hours of work, he's not got the outline of a human form to show for it, but what looks like the beginning of some very radical abstract art.

Ultimately, as it turns out, the kind of grout you use for bathroom tiles in the ordinary way of things won't do for finer glass mosaic work. That explains the melting.

When he tells Norris, Norris shrugs, says it could have happened to anyone, and tells him it's no problem so long as he can get it sorted by the end of the week. Put it to rights and no-one need know. That was a motto that had got them through a lot in the army.

* * *

When Patsy gets back to Nonnatus House, Fred is busy with the work of putting things to rights. He's at work on another batch of tiles. He strikes the rolling pin on the end of the chisel, and chips the glass into something like the desired shape. He may have had problems with the grout, but there's nothing wrong with this method when you need a tile in a shape other than square.

As he strikes with the rolling pin, a small slither of tile goes flying out of the bundle and across the floor. It's about the size of a pinhead, and blue - a cornflower blue for the little mosaic girl's dress.

Actually, wonders Patsy, is it rather disturbing that the child designer has decided that she is among the four most prominent people in Poplar, to be commemorated in perpetuity in glass tile? A sign of incipient infant megalomania? Or perhaps that's just the canny self-promotion of an aspiring artist.

Patsy picks up the slither and hands it back to Fred.

"It's cracked - toss it in the rubbish for me, would you Nurse Mount?"

Fred's right - perhaps he has a craftsman's eye, after all - there's a hairline crack running right down the centre. The light dances off it.

In addition to being the cornflower blue specified by the unseen, unknown child artist, it's also very like the blue spots of Delia's favourite dress.

Patsy takes the segment of glass tile and has it set. Not in a ring, but in a necklace. It looks less...provocative than a ring, anyway. It can be worn around a neck innocuously, without inspiring questions.

* * *

Fred does finish the mosaic wall by the end of the week. Just. There are no more problems with the grout; and the glass tiles glint when the sun hits them. Looking it from the right angle, this could be a New Jerusalem.

Unfortunately, look from the wrong angle, and the problem becomes apparent. As Fred has worked, left to right, his figures have - inexplicably - grown bigger and bigger. The bus driver is taller than the docker (not, in itself a problem); the little girl is far too large to be a little girl; and the nun - the nun dwarfs all three of them. It's probably down to a slight miscalculation with the angle of the ruler or the spirit level in the early stages of drawing. Or perhaps it was the speed of the race to the finish.

That's the problem: a small loss of concentration leading to a larger loss of perspective.

But, also, because this is a nine year old's blobby, imprecise design - albeit executed to the letter - the black and white of the Poplar nun does look rather like a penguin. That's not Fred's fault. And she's meant to be holding a baby in her left hand. But babies, when you think about them, don't have much shape to begin with. It doesn't translate well into art; but that's not Fred's fault - that's biology and evolution and nature. It's certainly not Fred's fault that the baby looks - well - like a fish.

Amongst the children of Poplar, it quickly comes to be known as the Penguin Wall.

* * *

 **A/N: I call this my cheap and unsophisticated rip-off of Elizabeth Bishop's 'One Art'.**


	13. The Jam Roly-Poly Investigation

**Chapter 13. The Jam Roly-Poly Investigation**

Nuns _can_ celebrate birthdays. There's no prohibition on it. Barbara wrote to her father to make absolutely sure, asking him to reply with canon law citations attached, if necessary. She'd - as casually as she could, lest she arouse suspicion - also mentioned it to Tom. When pressed on the matter, he'd replied he wasn't sure, and didn't see why not. But Barbara wrote to her father anyway: better to have the stamp of certainty.

Mr Gilbert said that most didn't like to draw attention to it, but there was nothing to forbid it. In case there was any doubt: love and do what you will. A principle which no-one – inside or outside the church – could really disagree with.

Sister Julienne is a cipher: they know almost nothing about her. Not true - they know the important things: that she is to be trusted in everything she does; that all she does is mild and full of good sense; that she intends the good (even if, on occasion, she and the younger nurses disagree on what the good is). But other important things, too, remain unknown: the things that make up who she is, not her moral character. Her favourite kind of biscuit; whether she really likes the drab colour of her office walls; how and where she travelled, before she came to Poplar.

You can know a person is good, Patsy thinks, and still not really know anything about them.

Patsy remembers - in her first days here - being invited into Sister Julienne's office, Bach's St Matthew Passion playing, soft, on the radio, throughout their conversation. And instead of listening to what Sister Julienne had said - about settling in, about learning the ropes, about how she'd get on with her new roommate, Patsy thought about the contrast. There could not have been a greater contrast between the words coming from Sister Julienne's mouth and the notes coming from the radio. Yet the same religion, the same fervent spiritual urges (more or less, give or take a few centuries), had produced both a piece of music of that character, and a woman of the character of Sister Julienne. Christianity, in its twentieth century, presented its claim to universal truth both in the bold and magisterial tones of the choral score and in the mild authority of the person sitting in front of her. Currents of religious enthusiasm running to the same end, expressed in entirely different ways.

Listening to the music, you could work out how the oratorio was built: from the combination of notes, from the way they struck your ear. But what was there in Sister Julienne, when the office and the duties were set aside? Patsy turned over the question, but came back without answer.

* * *

A visitor - a young man delivering some parts or other Fred had ordered to fix Nonnatus House (fixing, at Fred's pace, being an ongoing project, stretching on to the fringes of eternity) had been standing in the hall, getting a signature for the consignment. He was northern, tall, quite amiable - until, recognising a fellow voice from beyond the Pennines, he'd made the mistake of accusing Nurse Crane of being a Leeds United supporter. And Nurse Crane did treat it as an accusation - a slur upon her moral character.

Nurse Crane had let the young man know, in no uncertain terms, that Huddersfield Town had been, and would always be, her team, world without end. Lay her out in her coffin and she'd be decked out in blue and white. She'd had a season ticket, until interrupted by the war. And, out of nowhere, Sister Julienne had remarked that hadn't Huddersfield Town been the first club to win three successive league titles; she'd always remember it, because they'd won it a third time on her birthday, and she'd been in the North East at the time. The streets had been so full at the final whistle.

"Don't you see what this means?" said Barbara.

"It means", scowled Patsy, rubbing a football-shaped bruise on her forearm, "that the next time one of the scouts kicks a ball towards me and shouts that I'm the goalie, I shall fetch Phyllis."

"No. It means we know Sister Julienne's birthday. I've already gone to the football tables in the encyclopaedia and looked it up."

"And what exactly are you planning to do with this information, Babs? Blackmail her?"

"I thought it might be nice to get her a present."

"It would be good to have a celebration in this house. It might be time", Delia adds.

This is an acutely accurate point. It has been a long mourning, a heavy time, since Sister Evangelina. But eventually there must be an end to it.

* * *

So there's a council of war.

In council, they realise they don't know Sister Julienne very well at all. Is that because she has so much do to that she moves from one thing to the next without small talk?

It's not because she's a nun. Because they have a least some sense of the other sisters. Sister Mary Cynthia, obviously, they know, because they knew her before she was Sister Mary Cynthia. Sister Winifred too, always radiates some sense of self from behind the habit. That's how they know not only her taste in films (she sighs at the mention of Guys and Dolls; Patsy swears she saw her using a photograph of Jean Simmons and Marlon Brando as a bookmark in a sacred text), but also the fact that she's trying to persuade the little black stray cat that sometimes lurks under the railway bridge to come and make its home in Nonnatus House. And Sister Monica Joan was, only last week, lamenting the fact that the house did not possess an astrolabe - so there was an easy choice of present for her (albeit one difficult to wrap).

Maybe the work of being an advanced nun - a kind of spiritual perfection - is to be unreadable. Or maybe Sister Julienne is just more guarded than the others. Whether that guardedness is cultivated, developed for her office, or whether it is just who she is (and who she was before she went into orders) - that is unknowable.

When she speaks, is she speaking for herself, for Nonnatus House, or for the order? Whose voice is it?

And is it a failure - a collective failure, on all their parts - that none of them has considered these questions before now?

It would have to be a small gift, they establish this immediately. She'd reject any money spent on her, or anything too lavish. The way to circumvent any awkwardness is to present it as a gift for Nonnatus House too. That way they could pass it off as a gift-but-not-really-a-gift. But still, it needs to be something pleasurable; not a new doormat or tablecloth.

They could, of course, put on a special birthday tea for her. But none of them is really sure whether Sister Julienne actually enjoys sweet things, what her taste runs to.

* * *

Barbara takes the matter in hand. For about a week, she comes back to dinner each evening having been "surprised" or "pounced upon" by a grateful former patient or new-mother who has allegedly prepared a dessert of some kind to thank all at Nonnatus House for their medical efforts.

Because this way, she can see if Sister Julienne's face really lights up when the particular dessert is unveiled.

After the fourth cake, Delia and Trixie stop her. Trixie isn't doing enough keep-fit classes to fend off the effect of all these cakes. Besides, it's raising suspicions. Not necessarily birthday-related suspicions - more that Barbara is trying to win everyone over with sweet things before confessing to the fact she's done something terrible, unforgivable.

The results after four days of surprise puddings are sadly inconclusive. Barbara is slightly miffed, because she'd been planning to introduce a tiramisu - exotic, "like an Italian version of trifle" - at the end of the week, before her plans were torpedoed.

The question of whether Sister Julienne likes cake becomes another unknowable.

So, instead, in the mornings, Barbara assiduously watches Sister Julienne as she goes about her breakfast, to determine what she takes on her toast, or how much sugar goes into her tea. Because if she likes jam, they could have a jam roly-poly. She watches too assiduously.

"Nurse Gilbert, is there something wrong? You've seemed rather distracted these past few mornings."

Barbara comes away from breakfast with an open invitation to visit Sister Julienne in her office to discuss anything that might be troubling her, but with no particularly useful information on the sweetness of her tooth.

The Council of War flags, until Trixie comes in one evening. Having spent most of the day dressing ulcers on home visits, she looks surprisingly perky. She has the answer.

The answer is bees. Her last patient of the day keeps a small hive of his own in a little garden; but his nephew has a whole colony in Kent. And he'd happily give them a small "starter pack". Sister Julienne could tend to her own hive. It's a very relaxing hobby - the Kentish nephew swears it's taken years off him.

Bees, Trixie thinks, would tick all the right boxes. Because it's frugal - they'd be making their own honey, so any objections of excessive generosity could be overcome. And bees are a model of order. Serenity and busy-ness - the two words that you might most apply to Sister Julienne, if asked to describe her.

"We can't honestly introduce bees to Poplar", objects Patsy.

"Why ever not? It would brighten the ambiance immensely."

"It's not exactly a pastoral idyll, Trixie." Patsy gestures around the room in demonstration.

"But that's the point - it would be more pastoral with bees."

Trixie wins the argument; Patsy comes round.

Initially, Delia tries to persuade Nurse Crane to drive to Kent to pick up the hive. The hive would have been cooled beforehand, lulling the bees to sleep for the drive back to London. Delia even offered to pay for the petrol. In a short conversation, Nurse Crane declined. In retrospect, Delia realises that she should not have used the word "sting" so many times in a single sentence.

The nephew of the Poplar beekeeper offers to deliver them the next week, when he's visiting his uncle anyway. No charge - Trixie must have done a smashing job on those ulcers.

But though generous, this is unfortunate, because it deprives Patsy of the opportunity to imagine the farce of Nurse Crane and Delia attempting to wedge a hive into the Morris, or fit it on a roof-rack; or how they'd spending the entire journey home in a sort of frantic state: Phyllis fretting about whether transporting a hive is contrary to the highway code; Delia worrying about the temperature and welfare of the bees.

* * *

There's a slight problem in trying to distract Sister Julienne on the day of the delivery. Trixie advises Barbara to fake a spiritual crisis, but Barbara responds that she cannot possibly portray the kind of spiritual torments and agony that will be required to last as long as the delivery of the hive. In the end, Trixie cracks, has a quiet word with Sister Mary Cynthia, who promises to keep Sister Julienne indoors at the crucial moment.

Sister Monica Joan has, by hook or by crook (or perhaps the Council of War was discussing it, and didn't notice her ears were tuned into their conversation and not the television broadcast) found out about the plan. There's no danger that she'll ruin the surprise, because she is gleeful at being initiated into the plot. However, she does move around Nonnatus House with a Sphinx-like grin. She greets the milkman one morning and taps the side of the milk bottle. "We live in a land of milk; but soon it will be a land of milk and honey" she tells him. Trixie, who overhears the remark, warns her that if she accidentally gives the game away, Sister Monica Joan will never be allowed to sample future pots of Nonnatus House honey.

Sister Julienne, if she notices the plotting going on all around her, never says anything. If she knows - they'll never know. Maybe that's the key to her authority though. She doesn't need to be bold or grand or explicit - her power comes from the fact that you don't know what she's thinking, whether it's agreement or disapproval.

* * *

At the last moment, the day before the hive arrives, they panic. What if the bees die from the smog or a cold snap? What if Sister Julienne is actually - really now - too busy for the business of apiary? It is entirely possible that they have, wholly unintentionally, added another duty to her long list of chores.

How will they know whether her gratitude is the gratitude of someone who has been bought a truly appropriate gift, or is simply the gratitude of someone who feels loved and appreciated by the people who gave her the gift?

Barbara thinks that perhaps they should scrap the hive - hide it somewhere - and make her a jam roly-poly instead. Barbara worries that you can't wrap a hive, so it will hardly feel like a birthday present at all. But these are just last-minute nerves; they've gone too far now to turn back. Somewhere in Kent, the bees are slowly being lulled to sleep and cooled, ready for their pilgrimage to Poplar.

They present Sister Julienne with the hive. It's not clear whether she enjoys tending the bees (although she says she does, and it seems convincing). They worry sometimes that it might be less of a joy than an obligation. But it's conceivable that a task can be both.

By the end of the year, Nonnatus House is making small amounts of moderately good honey.

As she works at the business of bee-keeping, Sister Julienne hums the St Matthew Passion.


	14. The Detente

_Just in case: "Detente" (and I'm impatient and can't work out how to put in the accent on the "e") = the term for a thawing of political relations during the Cold War_

 **Chapter 14. The Detente**

The great cries of world politics aren't often heard at Nonnatus House. Especially not over breakfast. True, there have been minor skirmishes about the contraceptive pill and unwed mothers; and even some forthright discussion of abortion laws. But those were all issues which impinge more or less directly upon the work of the sisters and nurses. This is different.

The strain of those arguments were nothing like the weight of world events which descends upon them in the middle of October. The fog of armageddon, Delia thinks. You eat your breakfast and go off to your job with such horror looming that you can't think clearly. The world turned upside down. Feeling all day like Jonah in the mouth of the whale, waiting to be swallowed, anticipating the moment the jaws of the beast will clamp down around him.

There are missiles in Cuba; the US and the USSR have strong opinions about it and the whole world is squeezed between them. It makes time stop and time speed up. It induces nervous hysteria in some of the mothers-to-be. Fred starts to lose confidence in the training of his Civil Defence group volunteers, and snaps at those who are late to meetings. Soon it may all become more than the "scouts group for adults" as Nurse Crane sometimes mockingly labels them.

You can find Fred, early in the morning, making little notes on pieces of paper about how his drills could be improved. Or the number of people needed at each location in a crisis. And recruiting long-legged teenagers as runners, in case the telephone network goes down.

"Crisis" is the word used on the nightly television broadcasts. The same word you'd use when a fever reaches that point where it either breaks or becomes something worse. Still, by some measure, it's a better term than some of the other, more accurate alternatives. The euphemism of "crisis", Delia thinks, is preferable to "threat of imminent worldwide nuclear war" by some margin.

Nurse Crane, who so often recounts how they coped with the great uncertainties of the last war by keeping on - by staying the course - even she looks nervous. This is not that kind of war, and cannot be fixed that way - by sheer willful determination and the gritting of teeth (those two are usually Nurse Crane's first pieces of advice in most panic situations. Her rhetoric is, at times, almost Churchillian).

Actually, what's most worrying is that people have started again to refer to the war as the "last" war. As if "last" meant only the most recent, not final. As if there was another one soon to come. As if, actually, nothing had come to an end in 1945, but those last 17 years had just been an interim, an in-the-meantime, a giant pause for breath. As if all that time, all the time which Delia can remember, the entirety of her lived life, has just been a comma between one bloodletting and the next.

The only person who appears to live gloriously interrupted and unruffled by any of this is Sister Monica Joan. But that may be because she treats even small problems as dramas of cosmic importance.

That's not to say that Sister Monica Joan doesn't have an opinion.

It transpires that she has kept in contact with the kind couple who brought her indoors and nursed her through her fever when she made her homeward pilgrimage that Christmas. Their epistolary exchange has not been one of mere pleasantries, but an exchange of opinions and leaflets on the topic of nuclear disarmament.

Sister Monica Joan offers up a little sermon on the evils of atomic energy. On the basic unnaturalness of nuclear energy - of splitting apart two things which are so closely bonded together. On the wickedness of making the universe implode in on itself. On the blindness of a science that sees only the tool and never the consequence. On the parallels between splitting the atom and rending the seamless garment of Christ in two.

To the end of this speech, she appends the announcement that it is her intention to join the next CND march. Her two friends have invited her, she will be treated reverentially - as a special guest - and not expected to do too much marching. Perfect care will be taken of her - she attempts to anticipate Sister Julienne's likely objections. Besides, her presence will bring a religious endorsement to the condemnation of worldwide war. Did Christ not say "Peace I leave you with; my peace I give you"?

He did, she adds, lest the rhetorical question be mistaken for a real one.

While it is Sister Julienne who must give permission, everyone present expects the strongest objection to come from Sister Winifred. Delia, at least, is anticipating that Sister Winifred will say that the Poplar Front For Nuclear Disarmament goes far beyond the appropriate ways in which their order should interact with society. Sister Winifred might even throw in an objection on principle to Sister Monica Joan corresponding with the two students at all, when such correspondence can hardly be said to serve purposes of spiritual guidance or evangelisation; especially when Sister Monica Joan so often refuses to write to the Mother House, despite frequent cajoling.

But none of these objections come forth.

"I think that's a marvellous idea, sister." This is said with such overwhelming enthusiasm that there's almost an exclamation at the end of the sentence.

Delia thinks she might have to rethink Sister Winifred. She is conservative (with a small 'c'), true. And she is ever quick to condemn moral wrongs. But she's also a conservative in the sense of wanting to conserve things, which includes the planet from ballistic missiles and atomic destruction.

Sister Julienne, in fact, is what stands between Sister Monica Joan and pride of place on the march. Because the sisters are not a political order; because a vow of obedience means it is not for them to express _whatever_ they might feel; and, most importantly, because the Mother House - and Sister Jesu Emmanuel in particular - has been clear on this. So there can be no indulgence this time.

Sister Winifred walks into Sister Julienne's office, very calmly, and, miraculously, persuades her that Sister Monica Joan's presence at the rally is something akin to a theological calling. It is just that the Mother House does not appreciate that - _yet_. And - and this comes almost as an aside - as there's space, Sister Winifred will be going to the protest too.

When all this - not least the strangeness of the alliance between Sister Monica Joan and Sister Winifred - is discussed at lunch, Patsy is very quiet. She doesn't even laugh at the idea of the two nuns crammed into a van of student protesters. It's something Trixie half notices.

Later, she asks Delia if Patsy is quite alright. (This because Delia's reactions are, generally, more predictable, so this is a more sensible course of action than asking Patsy directly - this is how Trixie justifies it to herself.)

"That's quite a complicated question."

Complicated isn't half of it. Delia wonders: how much is she meant to tell? How much would Patsy want Trixie to know? There's a limit to how much she wants to discuss it with Delia, in fact. Delia knows the reasons, but that's not the same as actually talking about it.

There are some things that are of an entirely different order of magnitude. Topics of conversation which aren't merely difficult, or personal, or sensitive, but just unapproachable in words. Something that - with the best will in the world - you can't think yourself into. But part of taking care of Patsy in this instance is the job of putting it into words. So Patsy doesn't have to. Just a few. Just enough to make Trixie understand.

"What it is - I think" (she tries to stress the word think, in the hope that Trixie will grasp that it is not really something to be talked about) "is that Patsy doesn't quite come at it from the same angle as you or I do."

No, that's too oblique. Trixie evidently still has no idea. (But why should she draw the connection if it's not hers to draw?)

Delia turns around to face it a second time.

"If you remember 1945, and where she was when the first atom bomb was dropped. And what that meant, I mean more or less immediately, for Patsy."

Some measure of understanding, then horror, spreads over Trixie's face.

"Oh."

"It's not that she endorses it - it's just that she can't think of it as a political argument with pros and cons, not when it's something that happened to her. The thought of-"

"No. No, Delia, that's enough - I see."

* * *

Sister Monica Joan and Sister Winifred are kneeling on the floor of the parlour together (together!) making banners for the rally. Sister Winifred is quite a talented artist, really. "Swords into ploughshares into banners", nods Sister Monica Joan sagely.

Sister Winifred does the art. Sister Monica Joan has been, for the most part, assisting by suggesting slogans that are entirely too long for their banner. Any protest sign that could accommodate her suggestions would require most of the order of St. Raymond Nonnatus to carry it. Or, if they're not too long, they are too esoteric. It's perhaps a trifle obscure to claim that both Kennedy and Khrushchev are the reincarnation of Jereboam, wickedest king of the wicked Old Testament kings.

Sister Winifred remains tactful. "The idea is powerful, but maybe it needs to be a little snappier? I'm not sure the people we need to persuade will recognise the scriptural allusion."

They end up with "Seek peace and pursue it." It satisfies both the biblical scholar and the new-found sloganeer in Sister Winifred.

While the rest of Nonnatus House is helping - with suggestions of colour, or of letters that need touching up - Delia slips upstairs to find Patsy.

"How are you?"

Patsy doesn't say.

"All that downstairs about atom bombs." (Delia thinks it's probably acceptable for her to say the word.) "I know, and I'm not going to ask. But I'm going to stay here with you while we're not talking about it."

Patsy eventually turns her head and says something.

"It's a long list, isn't it?"

"Pats?"

"A long list of things I don't like to talk about. Much longer than I'd like it to be."

"You can have that list as long as you want it to be."

Whatever Delia says, Patsy thinks, it _is_ a long list.

And the fact is, everyone has something that sets them off, in one form or another. Hers are just slightly stranger, and there are more of them. But Trixie will never be able to walk past a bar with complete nonchalance. She'll seem composed, but pretending not to care is hard work for her, she's admitted as much. Sister Mary Cynthia sometimes see her little brother in some of the children she works with, and her small voice becomes just that bit quieter. There are other things, other lists, we just don't know them, we're not privy to what makes Sister Julienne wince to mention; which words strike a chill in Sister Winifred.

And it's no good. It doesn't do to freeze up halfway through a conversation because someone innocently used a word not knowing your own intimate history. It's no way to live. But there's also not necessarily anything you can do to change it. Some things can only be lived with. That she knows.

* * *

Sister Monica Joan returns from the rally, escorted to the door by the nice young man and the nice young woman, and with Sister Winifred alongside her. The nice young man and nice young woman look abashed, as if something terrible has happened and it is all their fault. But they've brought back two nuns, the same number they left with. So it cannot be that serious.

Sister Winifred has been cautioned. Not for violence, of course, but for refusing to acknowledge an officer who told her to move on during the heat of the rally.

Sister Monica Joan is deeply jealous that she was not cautioned, that she been denied this badge of honour. She hides her jealousy poorly. It is, she explains, only on account of her very great age that she herself was not confronted by the policeman. She was causing as much (if not more) of a threat to public order as Sister Winifred. She absolutely wants that known. And she vows to go on the next protest, where she will probably be arrested immediately if they see her face again. No mere caution.

Of course it's competitive civil disobedience. It may be swords into ploughshares, but it's also a question of who has the nicest ploughshare.

The thaw is over.

* * *

 **Suggested alternative title: "In Defence of Sister Winifred". Sometimes I am too hard on her, and it's too easy to make her the butt of every joke.**

 **The next chapter is...a little different. Because we're going to talk about the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1962. Not a proud moment in British history. Consider this fair warning.**


	15. The Whited Sepulchre

_Warning: none of this is funny, and much of it is angry. We return to our regularly scheduled programming of "Patsy & Delia do charming things" next time._

 _Before reading, if you don't know it, look up Holman Hunt's "The Light of the World". Oh, and probably don't read this if you're a fan of pre-Raphaelite art._

 **Chapter 15. The Whited Sepulchre**

It is, probably, the most horrible painting ever painted.

That's not an expert opinion. But it is the general consensus at Nonnatus House.

It doesn't actually, strictly speaking, depict anything horrible: it's not a dramatic wartime scene of running blood, there's no obvious barbarism, no limbs being hacked off, and it's not the Final Judgment, the moment at which the damned are cast into hell for all eternity. So, in that sense, it's rather less grotesque than what you might find on an English countryside church in a stone relief depicting the death of sinners and their torment by demons.

But it might be better if it were such a stone relief. That would be straightforwardly terrifying. There's something hideously unsettling about it.

The offending painting is a reproduction of Holman Hunt's "The Light of the World". The figure of Jesus, in the middle of the night, in high Victorian pre-Raphaelite fashion, wearing what could be a nightgown but is probably intended to resemble an ancient toga, is carrying a lamp and knocking at what looks like the door of an old shed, in the middle of an overgrown garden. As if he's about to abduct the occupier in the middle of the night.

Unfortunately, this is what the Mother House has decided to send to Nonnatus, a print intended for the celebration of some significant anniversary.

So it has to take a prominent position. It's framed and hung up in the hallway. It's half the size of the original, but it's still the height of a fully grown man. Sister Monica Joan glowers at it as she goes past – it's nothing to do with her. She was born almost half a century after its commission, and considers it a hideous antique.

"He does look very reproachful", Patsy notes, trying to work out exactly what Christ's facial expression is meant to convey. This is not the sort of painting that anyone would wish to be confronted with – without warning – after a day attempting to patch up bodies all around the East End.

"Maybe that's the point? He's disappointed in us all." Barbara sounds slightly worried.

(All four of them there gathered – Patsy, Barbara, Delia and Trixie – worry about what the hideous Christ might be reproaching them for. Their inattention to the latest midwifery techniques? Greed in taking the last slice of toast at breakfast that morning? Or other, graver, sins of the flesh?)

"More than disappointed, Barbara – looks like he's about to cast us into the fiery furnace and let us all burn forever."

Delia's right. Christ, in this image, looks even less tolerant of mistakes than Nurse Crane. And far less even-tempered.

Trixie is more vehement. "I will put up with a leaking roof and frankly inadequate bathroom facilities – but not with this staring at me as I come down the stairs every morning. This is too much. Someone ought to say something to Sister Julienne."

It's not welcoming. It will hardly encourage nervous unmarried mothers or young women in trouble to come in and ask for advice; it doesn't proclaim that the sisters here will keep your confidences; it doesn't inspire trust – only judgment and fear of judgment.

But, in the eyes of the order, it is the kind of anguished Victorian painting which apparently is a thing of beauty and must endure forever. Everything about it is "flowing"; the long white robes, Christ's flowing blonde locks.

The eyes follow you around the hall.

It looks like Christ is about to bash you about the head with the lamp he's holding.

It's meant to _mean_ something, which is what these kind of one-hundred year old paintings are all about: heavy symbolism, the kind that hits you with unrelenting allegory until you give in.

Almost everyone has their doubts about it.

Sister Mary Cynthia looks at it, takes in Jesus's long blonde locks, his pale skin, but doesn't say anything.

* * *

The reason Sister Mary Cynthia dwells on it is this:

She attended a mother, Mrs York, yesterday. And Mrs York was crying – sobbing with the whole of her body rising and falling unevenly. She was ashamed of her crying too, and whenever her body would let her - whenever her voice would stop catching - she let out an apology to the sister, for keeping her from her work, her rounds, for being such an inconvenience, a bad appointment in a busy list.

Mrs York was crying because she'd expected that her brother and his family would be coming over from Trinidad to join her. And crying because now he won't be. Even though he's a citizen of the British Commonwealth (and his passport proclaims it to be so), he's not welcome in Britain.

Mrs York's brother is a civil engineer. He wants to build houses. He wants to build the kind of modest, clean, up-to-spec houses that people in Poplar have been dying for (quite literally, dying for, from diseases of overcrowding) for a century or more.

His children – Mrs York's two nieces, who write her long letters twice a month, which she reads to Sister Mary Cynthia each time she comes round – aren't welcome either.

And Sister Mary Cynthia can't help but glance in the direction of the flat's corridor, because she's seen the room at the end of it, the room that Mrs York had specially made up for her nieces. (Mrs York's brother would have slept on the couch, until he found his own place, but Mrs York, even as she'd ballooned in the final months of her pregnancy, had gone about making the room as nice as she could for her two nieces, even down to the two twin beds and the fresh sheets spread out for them.)

There's something very ugly about it.

Because it's 1962, and the government has decided that it's had enough of them. Of immigrants, that is. (Of commonwealth immigrants – and anyone who hears the term knows what that means. Knows what bell the word "commonwealth" rings. It doesn't really mean where you happen to come from. It denotes colour.)

Of course, the Bible instructs that even those in orders must "render unto Caesar…". Which probably means Sister Mary Cynthia ought not to get involved, because Caesar is the one who gets to make immigration policy, and morality doesn't come into it.

Sister Mary Cynthia can't help thinking, however, that Jesus did overturn the tables in the temple, when he saw something indecent. He didn't shake his head disapprovingly but decide that ultimately the regulations set on temple stallholders in Jerusalem were an administrative, governmental matter.

* * *

And then, this morning, when she was doing general rounds:

She was changing the dressing on Mr Thompson's leg. It wasn't healing as fast as it should – because Mr Thompson refuses to do the gentle, daily exercises that have been recommended for him. Mr Thompson seems willfully ignorant, and refuses to understand that he can't be healed just by lying there. In the history of medicine, no-one was ever cured by just lying there, and refusing to change their diet, or make some small accommodation towards improving their condition. Well – one exception – Lazarus, Sister Mary Cynthia supposes.

Of course, this is not exactly what she says to Mr Thompson. Softly, softly – she'll go through the exercises with him again.

Only, then her eyes had fallen on a flyer on the table. She'd noticed it because it lay on top of the handwritten sheet of leg exercises that had been given to Mr Thompson on discharge from the hospital two weeks ago. The flyer looked distinctly well-thumbed. The sheet of exercises, by contrast, was pristine. It was a flyer from a kind of rally, a show that the British Public (self-labelled) didn't think the new Commonwealth Immigration Act went far enough.

Mr Thompson mistakes the look on her face for interest.

"You see love, we've got enough of them. I'm no racialist – but we've had enough of them now."

Mr Thompson didn't say this when the nurse from the West Indies was holding his bedpan in hospital, six weeks ago. He didn't say then that we'd got enough of them and he'd prefer to wait until someone of his own skin colour would be able to hold the bedpan for him and help him relieve himself. But holding any conversation which didn't begin with "Nurse!" followed by a sharp request would, of course, have required him to learn her name.

Mrs Thompson nods. "It's just sensible to have a bit of control. It's a very different culture."

This is Mrs Thompson, Sister Mary Cynthia notes, who piously attends church every Sunday, and is on the parish organising committee. She trots off, and trots back, looking uniquely pleased with herself. Of course, Sister Mary Cynthia would never use the term "whited sepulchre". But there's nothing to stop her from thinking it.

There's nothing to stop her from asking Mr Thompson who he means by "them", or which culture, exactly, Mrs Thompson is referring to, shared, apparently, by all incomers to this part of the East End.

But, for some reason, she doesn't ask.

She thinks of Mrs York and her family: English-speaking; English-ruled for long enough; English enough to be patriotically recruited to fight our non-English allies fifteen or so years ago, and the time before that.

English surnames, too – we "gave" those out too. That's why Mrs York is named after a city where people like her are apparently no longer wanted or can't be fitted.

* * *

When Sister Mary Cynthia returns, she goes upstairs, right to the top of Nonnatus House, to the attic where the Christmas figurines are kept. She's small, yes, but perfectly capable of managing the ladder by herself. And she brings the box downstairs.

She's not going to do anything, only have a look.

From the packing, she pulls out the figurines wrapped in the newspaper. At first, it's the animals: the donkey and the ass; then she gets a shepherd; a king, and finally - bingo - she reveals a pink-faced Mary, pink-faced Joseph, and tiny pink infant Christ.

Each of them look like they'd suffer from severe sunstroke if they went outside for more than twenty minutes in Galilee.

Sister Mary Cynthia is not a historian. But she has her doubts as to the historical accuracy of this scene.

She's reminded of the moment, last year, when a child had attempted to add a small toy plastic dinosaur to the back of the nativity in the church, and the child had been very gently reprimanded. As had been explained to him: because Christmas – the first Christmas – isn't just a story: it's history. And therefore, what's on show is a reflection of something that happened nearly two thousand years ago. And we know that there was a lamb in Bethlehem, and we know that there were no dinosaurs.

She mentions it to Tom Hereward, when he comes around that afternoon. Not pointedly – it's just that they now have a luminous white Christ in the hall, and a pink baby Jesus for the nativity. And for the Holy Land, two thousand years ago – that can't be exactly right, can it?

"But there are other races represented." Tom picks up, and turns over, a richly-dressed figurine of one of the three wise men, the one with a darker skin tone than the rest. "Balthazar, I think, who brought myrrh from the East."

The church, in its infinite wisdom, acknowledges that one of the wise men might not have been a European. And, more importantly, he's given the honour of carrying the myrrh, which is the symbol of death, and therefore the most important of all the gifts.

Tom fails to see the point Sister Mary Cynthia is trying to make.

And he continues, in defence of pink little Jesus (who, actually, from this angle, and wrapped in poorly-painted swaddling clothes, looks more like a grub than anything else). "I suppose that the makers of the set wanted people to be able to see themselves in the Holy Family. To be able to relate to it."

Except, as it happens, only one type of people can relate to it.

Except, as it happens, it's not _very_ relatable, because the scene they put out in the hall each December looks increasingly unlike the world in which it's set out.

Tom Hereward isn't a bad man. He's just – limited. He's never been asked to think about it, so he never has.

(But he was never asked to think about the role of women in the church, until Sister Monica Joan had asked him about Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, and demanded he explain how the problems of a "piffling little local church in Corinth" should be used to silence women, then, and now and in perpetuity. Tom hadn't had a very convincing answer for that, either.)

Sister Mary Cynthia points out that Christ, too, was an immigrant in a foreign land.

And that inaction is a sin.

It's not that Sister Mary Cynthia doesn't like Tom. But, as it happens, she always thought that Trixie could do a lot better, was worth a lot more. There was something not quite right about it, when the two of them were engaged and had that argument about where they'd go and who they'd be when they married. And Tom had said that, in his vocation, he had to go where the church called him, where the need was greatest, wherever he was sent. But in saying that – there was something that had made Trixie's own desires and hopes seem unworthy. There was something of the martyr in his complaining about the cost of the plates she wanted, or the expense of the party she planned. As if those things didn't matter at all; as if his position was so lofty and so closely scrutinised that it meant he could make no compromises whatsoever. (He wasn't a monk; and no-one in Poplar – no-one in the world – would have begrudged Trixie those things.)

These are uncharitable thoughts.

But – still – Sister Mary Cynthia understands something about a sense of vocation. And those who are called to the religious life shouldn't use it to scorn the desires of those who are not.

* * *

Sister Mary Cynthia doesn't manage to do anything about the nativity scene.

She can't, not really.

Except, that year, when the nativity scene goes up in Nonnatus House, she picks up a small tin toy car (from the children's toy box at the community hall, the very cheap kind you might find as a prize in a lucky dip) and places it at the back of the scene. Just to emphasise the inaccuracy. It's not exactly civil disobedience.

And she has to treat Mr Thompson just as she would any normal patient. She can't tell him what she thinks of him.

When Mr Thompson tells her that all this immigration is the thin end of the wedge, and that in twenty years time, no-one in the East End will be speaking the proper Queen's English anymore – well, then, she's not allowed to say that maybe it's Mr Thompson himself who is the thin end of another wedge; and the other end of that other wedge is Oswald Moseley and the Race Riots down in Notting Hill. (No, she doesn't say that.)

And she can't do anything about Mrs York's nieces, who continue to write letters to their aunt, who continues to read them to Sister Mary Cynthia, when she visits.

She writes a letter to her MP (in a personal capacity – she doesn't invoke the name of the order, doesn't make any claim to be a guardian of morality. She speaks only for herself). She gets a polite reply, thanking her for her opinion, telling her that the Labour Party was opposed to the bill anyway. But not telling her what, if anything, he's doing about it now.

And she has a long conversation with Sister Monica Joan about how St Augustine was a Berber, sprung of North African stock; and whether his place on the outside of Roman society changed the way in which he saw the church.

(And, really, isn't that the sort of sermon that Mr Hereward ought to be giving?)

Incidentally, speaking of the early Church gets Sister Monica Joan onto how much more beautiful were those early Roman images of Christ and the apostles than the "ancient monstrosity" that now hangs in the hallway. They talk about that for rather a long time, actually.

A few days later, Sister Mary Cynthia and Sister Monica Joan are the only ones in Nonnatus House. It's a fine day, and Sister Mary Cynthia looks outside.

Some boys are playing with a football, just in front of the steps.

What she does next is terribly, terribly wrong.

She knows one of the boys – she helped deliver his little sister last year. She calls him inside, and asks him if he'll help the sisters with a project (a secret project). Sister Monica Joan is at her side, and offers him a jelly baby (where have they come from? Barbara will have to become more adept at hiding her private stockpiles).

She tells the boy that the sisters want to test that the new painting is hung securely. (Rather unbelievable, to be sure.)

And, because they are in holy orders, they can absolutely promise him that he won't get in any trouble at all.

But the boy's reluctant to do it.

So Sister Monica Joan instructs him to take the bag of jelly babies, and just to wait outside on the step for a moment. And to leave the football with them. Just for a moment. And they close the door.

And Sister Mary Cynthia picks up the football and throws it as hard as she can at the painting.

And Christ wobbles on his hook, and the glass smashes.

* * *

 **A/N: Honestly, when I hear someone smugly claim** **that Britain has "always been welcoming to immigrants", I want to smash something.**

 **But, yep... not sure about this one, in terms of tone or content. It might be a bit crude and/or blunt and/or unsubtle. Thoughts welcomed.**

 **I live in hope of greater diversity in the medical staff in t** **he next series, i.e. reflective of the 1960s East End. Fun fact - by 1965, there were somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 Jamaican nurses in Britain. That's Jamaica _alone -_ and Britain had recruitment programmes for nurses a** **cross 15 other former colonies.**

 **Finally: Sorry, To** **m-fans. (Oh, wait...)**

Edit, 03/05/16: Eh, I've just realised that maybe SMC was at the Mother House during those episodes where Tom and Trixie argued about their engagement party. I can't rewatch right now to check, but if that's the case, er, let's pretend someone told her all about it when she returned. Or that she's all-seeing.


	16. The Rain and The Roman

**Chapter 16. The Rain and The Roman**

In September, it rains. It's the kind of rain which seems to have no end. It rains so much and so heavily that Sister Monica Joan does not even make reference to great biblical deluges, or to Noah, or to the Ark. Because those would be ideas obvious even to the stupidest and basest pagan, and her mind does not work in obvious ways.

Everything in Poplar is soggy. Even the mood. Especially the mood. There's more rainwater in Poplar than there is tea in China or gold in Christendom.

It is impossible to stay dry when riding a bicycle in rain like this. Whatever you wear. A cape is neither use nor ornament when it becomes so sodden. Everyone hopes for visits that will take them in the same general direction as Nurse Crane so they can reasonably ask for a lift.

The downside of this is that Nurse Crane is very particular about not getting the upholstery on the Morris wet (fears of rot), so if she spots you in the rain and offers you a lift back, she makes you sit on some plastic sheeting (the kind they put down to protect a mattress during a home birth). Which she keeps in the boot of the vehicle especially for that purpose. It's demeaning, but it's a mark of how miserable the rain is that each of the midwives is willing to endure it.

It is too wet to go out, unless it's for a scheduled or urgent appointment. Every board game and every card game in Nonnatus House has been played, every crossword completed. At least there's the television set, but even that betrays them when the weather forecast brings nothing but promises of more of the same.

"It's alright for you and Delia", complains Trixie. "You've got each other, you've no need to go out. Some of us have appointments with the world, if this rain ever stops."

Patsy doesn't entirely agree with the sentiment but doesn't say anything. Trixie seems to have taken _Singing in the Rain_ too literally. She and Delia are not exactly free to swan about Nonnatus House, arm-in-arm, as they please. But it's too wet to risk an argument, so she doesn't say this.

Besides, Delia has a vicious cold. She's off work, in case she infects anyone. The most Patsy can do is sit in a chair in the corner of the room and look on sympathetically, in some meagre attempt at quarantine. Delia has forbidden Patsy (or anyone else, for that matter), to come near her. She gives scornful looks to anyone who crosses the lines demarcating the Zone of Infection which she's mentally drawn up around her bed.

Delia's too unwell even to read the terrible science fiction stories that are usually her guilty pleasure during times of sickness. Patsy, ever attentive, sits in the chair and reads them to her - but the writing is so dire she winces. Delia's too sick even to be cross that Patsy won't attempt proper characterisation.

"I won't do the voices."

"Go on."

"No. Shhh. Rest."

Patsy doesn't feel too guilty about her half-hearted attempts at dramatics for the quarantined. When she was walking downstairs and out (out into the rain) that morning, she'd paused at the door - about to peer in and say goodbye to Delia (and to promise to buy her some of the licorice she particularly likes on her way home, to cheer her up) - she'd heard another voice coming from inside. Voices, plural, actually. Sister Monica Joan was reading to Delia - and doing quite a passable impression of a gravelly-voiced American space commander. How Delia had persuaded Sister Monica Joan - a woman of classical tastes - to lower herself to those books, Patsy had no idea. Perhaps the rain was getting to everyone. Perhaps Delia had been able to persuade her that it was some early, pseudonymous work of Charles Dickens. Featuring aliens from Mars and time travel.

Or, on the other hand, Sister Monica Joan really did have a soft spot for Delia. And it was returned.

* * *

Patsy is in the hall with the scouts. Fred, who was meant to be there, hasn't turned up. Delia, though recovering, is still too unwell to brave the rain. Patsy wishes someone had thought to cancel the meeting, but no-one did. The rain is making her mind soggy.

It's one thing for Fred to neglect the upkeep of Nonnatus House during the torrential rain (there was no good excuse, but he'd explained to Sister Julienne that the rain made his bones feel funny and he was forced to work at a slower pace), but flouting his duties with the scouts - and leaving Patsy in sole charge is quite another. There'll be words.

In theory, the scouts will be going camping next weekend. Patsy is talking about the countryside code - so, at least, if the rain ever does stop, and they ever do go out into the countryside (if there's any countryside left in this New Atlantis), they'll know about closing gates and picking up litter and not to approach cows. Cows can be dangerous, even the ones which don't have horns, she stresses.

(She'll do ten minutes more on camping, then move on to some kind of game. Duck duck goose, perhaps. They've all been trapped indoors all day. It would do them good to move about a bit.)

She's about to move on to how to select a good campsite, the final part of the camping talk. Patsy is not exactly a champion camper, so the following may be tricky. She'd be grateful if Fred arrived now. It would be a welcome interruption.

At this point, there is an interruption.

The lights go out. There's a thrilled squeal. Patsy tells the scouts to sit down and keep quiet - pack drill - while she fetches a candle. There must be one in here somewhere.

Patsy checks: they lights are off outside too. Water in the substation? A line down? She's running through the possibilities.

One boy thinks it's a ghost. Then, suddenly, they all think it's a ghost. They're all _convinced_ it's a ghost.

"It's not a ghost", says Patsy, firmly. That is the tone, which, when she uses it on patients, has the effect of compelling them to give up their wrong opinion straight away and accept her advice. Maybe it's the rain - the wet just eating away at the certainty and conviction in her tone - or maybe it's the scouts, but they remain convinced that The Ghost is the cause of the darkness.

"There are no such things."

"There are", responds someone from the darkness.

She tries a different tack. This is not the time, nor the appropriate lighting conditions, for an enquiry into the reality of supernatural phenomena.

"It can't be a ghost", Patsy explains in the tone of purest reason "because this hall is new - built after the war - the building isn't old enough to be haunted."

There's not a beat before the response comes. "It's not a modern ghost. It's an ancient Roman ghost who came over to build Hadrian's Wall and got left behind when the Romans left, and in the dark you can hear his sandals. And him speaking in Latin."

Ridiculous.

What's also ridiculous is standing here another 40 minutes in the dark. The boys go home by themselves – they're not picked up by their parents. So who's to say that parents will come tonight? And the telephone line is down too.

She can't send them off out into the pitch black. And she doesn't know how long the blackout will last. And she really can't endure an eternity in the darkness with stories of the Roman Ghost.

Fortunately, she is resourceful, and runs scout meetings in this hall once a week, often enough to know the contents of its cupboards. So Patsy fishes out a few lanterns left from last year's lantern parade, and lights them from her candle. She hands them to what she thinks, in the dark, are the silhouettes of the oldest, most sensible scouts.

She's going to have to take each one back to his home. Before they leave the hall, everyone in the pack needs a partner, which is a challenge even for her formidable organisational skills.

In the end, she promises them a badge for "brave behaviour under pressure" if they fall into pairs and walk home properly. Well - she can probably persuade Barbara to help her make some out of the leftover felt from the Harvest Festival craft. There was quite a lot of purple felt remaining - not much call for it in the agricultural scenes of straw being baled up.

They form a crocodile, still in the grip of a wild hysteria more commonly associated with fainting Victorian ladies of delicate constitution than EastEnd scout troops.

No one wants to be the boy at the back of the crocodile, because, of course, the ghost. So they have to institute a system in rotation. After they reach each house, the boy who has been at the back gets to go to the front, where Patsy is, and where the ghost is not. In reality, given the speed at which the pack progresses up and down the streets of Poplar, someone marching at a Roman pace would probably have overtaken them long ago, and been in Chester by now.

There are 23 scouts, and they live all across the borough of Poplar. It's still raining. Patsy reaches a point at which being dry seems like an entirely abstract concept, like winning the Olympics or experiencing a vision of God - that is, something which will never happen to her.

Patsy tries to convince herself - kid herself - that, at some point in the future, far off, this march through the rain will be funny. In the retelling, when she is not soaked to the skin, when she is not worried about a boy slipping off somewhere, when she is not being constantly beset by questions about whether it's true that last year a girl in Finchley Street was taken by a ghost and never seen again.

Of course, the regular falling of enormous drops of rain can, at times, to the untrained ear, sound very much like the flip-flop of ghostly roman sandals.

* * *

Nonnatus House is bathed in candlelight. The one distinct advantage of living with nuns is, in such circumstances, there's never any concern about a shortage of candles.

Patsy needs to immerse herself in warm water, and then sleep for an age. Sleep until the torrential floods have passed over Poplar - and, ideally, she thinks - washed away all thoughts of Roman ghosts.

But because she is dutiful and loving, and possibly also because she would like someone to complain to, she pokes her head around Delia's door. Besides, at this point any residual resistance left in her immune system has probably been washed away from the hours plodding around in the downpour, so attempting to maintain a no-contact quarantine any longer seems wholly futile. Not to mention frustrating.

Delia is brighter, is sitting up in bed and making a half-hearted attempt at reading a novel (though novel is too good a term for it) by the light of four or five candles.

"Come to bring the invalid some hot soup? You're too late - Nurse Crane has already taken care of me." Her tone changes. "Oh, Pats, you look dreadful. What were you doing out in rain for so long? That uniform will never be fit to wear again."

Delia looks really very pretty lit by only those four or five candles, her hair down and wild about her shoulders, still slightly pale from illness, like a consumptive heroine in a Gothic novel. Contagion be damned: Patsy kisses her. She doesn't sit down, but stands, trying not to drip too much on the carpet and relates the story about the lights, and the ghost and his sandals.

"Oh, I told them about the ghost last week, while we were waiting for you to arrive. They were bored. I thought it was quite an inventive story. I said it was a Roman because obviously the hall is too new to have its own ghost."

* * *

 **Hm, ok, I think there are about 2 chapters of this left.**

 **Thank you to everyone who left such helpful ( & long, & thought-provoking) comments on the last chapter. Lots to think about, but I won't bore you here.**

 **Side note: I was wondering if these stories were getting a little contrived. I pondered this on Sunday evening as I watched another mid-century English period drama, this one produced by ITV (hmm, let's call it "Foam Hires"). And then I realised that unless I decide to marry Patsy off to Tom and drive a Spitfire - no, sorry, a Douglas B-26K Counter Invader (period accuracy is important you see) - into their wedding, this fanfic cannot possibly be as infuriating, offensive or out-of-character as that - at least, I _hope_ not.**

 **(But I'm spitting blood about stupid wretched ITV.)**


	17. Wildlife in Poplar

**Chapter 17. Wildlife in Poplar**

It takes three buses and a fifteen minute walk to get there, the journey edging over an hour. It's a considerable time, given she's only got the afternoon off. But it was - it is - always worth the journey.

As a child, Delia had swum in the river that ran through the valley, only five minutes from their house (well, five minutes at a run). Her mother had said she was more fish than human. When Delia had got a bit older, she was allowed to take the bus into town to the municipal pool. But she still liked the river the best. For one thing, it was free (it meant Delia could save up her money and put it towards books that her cousin Bronwen thought gave her ideas above her station). For another, the water was better: darker, faster, colder. It was different each time, with the change of the seasons.

So here she is now, ten, eleven years later, at the swimming ponds on Hampstead Heath. There are nearer pools - lidos, even - to Poplar, some of them great ornate Art-Deco creations, with huge clocks and brightly-coloured changing rooms. But none of them give the sense of being back, on the edge of the bank in the late afternoon, slightly breathless from having run all the way there, straight from school.

If you looked around London enough, you could find bits that didn't quite fit in the city. This was one of them. You could imagine yourself back in Wales, or wherever it was that all these newly-minted Londoners came from: all across England, all across the commonwealth. Delia nods at one or two with them with familiarity; they sometimes exchange words about the temperature of the water. The word most often used is "bracing".

There's the occasional hint of wildlife at the fringes of the pond. Delia once saw a fox lurking in the bushes (peering, with absolute confusion, at all the things humans got up to on the Heath). There was a dragonfly or two in summer.

When she'd started training, Delia had managed to make it to the pond every week or every other week, and kept it up. It helped her keep an even temper. Even when she met Patsy, and started spending almost all her time with her, Delia had still kept that one afternoon or morning free, where she could.

Patsy had been not quite jealous of Delia's weekly disappearances, but her manner suggested intense interest in wherever she went. It was an interest she did not hide well. Obviously, being Patsy, she never came right out to ask Delia where she was going (because, of course not; Patsy could be relied upon to be direct with patients - but not where it involved matters touching her own life). There was a flash of possessiveness, growing from the assumption it was some sort of romantic assignation, a secret tryst that took Delia away from her with such regularity.

(A romantic assignation from which Delia returned with damp hair and with the scent of the pond clinging to her. In all her suspicions, Patsy didn't seem to have picked up on that.)

For a day or so after Delia's visits to the ponds, Patsy would always be a little bit off, a little bit cool. And then she'd come around again. Delia found the situation both entertaining and maddening. When she looked back on that time of her life, the phrase "entertainingly maddening" might have described training quite well. But, on balance, she refused to let the pattern continue: Patsy ought to be put out of her misery. So, coming back together from an afternoon off, she pulled Patsy off the bus and told her she'd show her where she went every week.

When they got through the gates and to the pond: "Oh", Patsy had said, "I thought you might be meeting a man". And an involuntary smile, and a look of relief, which Delia didn't miss.

(That look had confirmed a lot of things).

"Don't you think that I would have mentioned that to you?"

"I assumed you were trying to keep it a secret."

"If I've told you about the time I almost got expelled from school for leading the hockey team in a strike for better playing conditions - then, I don't think I have any secrets left from you."

Patsy had blushed at that (and that had confirmed things further).

They'd got back on the bus, back to the Nurses' Home, both of them feeling better.

From then on, it had been a kind of joke between them. Delia would leave for the ponds telling Patsy that she was "off to visit my mystery man".

It was a joke on more than one level. Not least because, at about the age of 14 or 15, her mam had been particularly concerned that Delia would run off with one of the lifeguards from the pool in town. She couldn't otherwise work out why Delia visited the place with such regularity. And, besides, when mam had been that age, one of her friends had been stepping out with a lifeguard - and got in the family way with it. And Delia was a bright girl, she had prospects, she was to finish her education certificate.

"Lifeguards don't change, Delia Busby - just you remember that!"

Delia remembered the warning, but had yet to find much practical use for it.

* * *

Today, Delia sees the fox again, although it won't come anywhere near her. The pond is, strictly speaking, not really wild: it's manicured and maintained; with a pontoon in summer and netting all around. You don't notice these things initially, because you're so taken in by surprise of a vast open water pool set down in London.

It's half-wild, then, like Sister Winifred's black cat.

The animal is small and capable of being ferocious but not at all streetwise. Sister Winifred, who (without explanation) had taken a shine to it, had been trying to coax it inside for weeks, by leaving little bits of bacon out for it (mostly from Fred's fry-ups and sandwiches; Fred had been too slow and too shocked to get his objections out at sharing his lunch). One day, after a week or so of feeding, it hadn't come out to see her at lunchtime, and she'd eventually found the little thing curled up behind a bin, bruised, with what look liked a bite taken out of its side.

Sister Winifred had brought it inside - small and sick - to bind its wounds and nurse it back to health ("Just temporarily, Sister Julienne").

It's taken up residence in a box with blankets in the parlour; Sister Winifred appears, without fail, every 5 hours to feed it milk. She'd borrowed pipettes from Mrs Turner for just this purpose. The animal was full grown, no kitten, but too weak to feed itself.

As the cat had recovered its strength, the question had come of what to do with it. It's still fearful, and won't leave its hiding place in the box. The only person for whom it makes a sound is Sister Winifred. It backs away when anyone but her comes near.

Barbara is incredibly keen to keep it (even though she's - possibly - mildly allergic to it), but is obviously trying quite hard not to let it show. So she prefaces all her comments about how good it would be for Nonnatus House, as a corporate body, to have a cat, and talks about "we" and "us" instead of "I" and "me". And blinks hard, because her eyes are still streaming a bit, whether from emotion or sensitivity to the fur.

Barbara also seems slightly concerned that Mrs Turner (by right of pipette) will at some point decide that she should have the cat, a pet for Tim and Angela. (Barbara's fear is probably misfounded – it's not clear that Angela yet has any conception of the difference between cats and dogs, or recognises that they're different species; Tim seems to have no interest whatsoever).

Sister Monica Joan gives her approval, for it is only appropriate to show charity, especially given that black cats are amongst the most misunderstood and maligned of creatures, and all too often their owners were burned at the stake. (At least, Delia think that's approval.)

"I don't think anyone has been burned at the stake for several hundred years", observes Sister Mary Cynthia mildly. It's not a reprimand - she too seems quite taken with the little animal - but more a correction in the interests of historical accuracy.

It's true, they don't burn witches anymore in Poplar.

(What happened to Mr Amos was obviously not a witch burning.)

Nurse Crane had put in that as long as it was without fleas, it did not bother her if it remained.

So the conversation had turned: how do you convince a wild animal to stay? Especially when it's such a frightened little thing. How do you make something nervous and shy trust your intentions? (Easy, thinks Delia: take it to the pond in Hampstead Heath and show it).

Nurse Crane was of the opinion that if it's getting regular meals, it'll stay. Cats know which side their bread is buttered.

Sister Monica Joan had recommended buttering its paws.

Barbara is already talking about getting it a collar. Just in case anyone else should try to claim it. Although for a collar it needs to have a name, so that must be decided as soon as possible. Even if it is merely a temporary resident of Nonnatus House, a cat should have a collar, just to show it isn't merely a stray.

"Barbara - it's a tiny, straggly little runt - no-one else will want it", said Trixie.

Both Barbara and Sister Winifred looked mortally offended.

Sister Winifred is trying to work out whether to call it Raymond would be an appropriate mark of respect to the order, or a moral affront. (It is a clean, flea-free, well-behaved cat who shows due deference to nuns, so perhaps it would be appropriate. However, it is nevertheless and inescapably still a cat.)

Sister Monica Joan wants to call it Greymalkin.

"But, Sister, it's not grey."

"The name Greymalkin does not refer to its colouring, but to its status as a familiar."

* * *

After an hour's bus ride back, Patsy picks a strand of pondweed from Delia's hair, wrinkling her nose. Evidently, she'd not all of it showered out.

"You're like some creature from the deep."

"Hm, a siren or a mermaid?"

"Neither - more like a giant squid, with your arms all over me."

"Charming!"

"Don't stop: I don't dislike giant squids."

Later, Patsy and Delia are walking downstairs. The cat - still small, but now as bold as brass - is sitting there on the top step. They walk towards it and it does move or cower. It inclines its head towards them, asking to be petted. It winds itself around their legs: sure that all the humans in the place must love and dote on it as much as Sister Winifred and Barbara.

"How on earth did you manage that?"

"We buttered its paws. Literally, in fact. It spent the whole afternoon licking off the butter, and by the time it was done, it had forgotten to be fearful."

"So Sister Monica Joan was right."

"She is, surprisingly often."

Patsy stops and thinks about the operation of the buttering.

"But Deels - probably better to have jam on your toast tomorrow morning."

* * *

 **A/N: If I were to get on my high horse, I'd say that the closure of lidos (many of them really beautiful 1930s designs) was one of the great architectural and social losses of postwar Britain (especially in northern coastal towns). Depressingly, they are still being closed down. But this...is probably not the time or place for my reflections on the cultural significance of the golden age of outdoor swimming, so I'll probably just write a letter to _The Guardian_ instead.**


	18. A Bag of Oranges

_This is the sequel (companion piece?) to chapter 6, in which Patsy and Nurse Crane took a trip to Basingstoke._

 **Chapter 18. A Bag of Oranges**

Sometimes, one could easily get the impression that Doctor Turner is the _only_ doctor in Poplar.

He isn't, of course.

The National Health Service renews itself. It doesn't recruit doctors as the finished article, it draws them in and trains them, passes them around the Health Service until bits of the institution are embedded within them. It's a little like an infusion of blood: the new ones are introduced into the stream and swirl around with old blood in the body. It should be an osmotic process: the NHS gets a little something of them, and they get a little something of the NHS. An ethos of service - at least, that's the idea.

And whereas the Church marks its renewals noisily, gaudily - with festivals, hymns, and an abundance of symbols (the cross, the rolled-away stone, the new blade of grass) - the NHS does it silently, almost imperceptibly.

Across the East End, across London, across all of England: doctors swirling round, on rotation. And this month, it's Doctor Turner's turn to take one - to expose him to the variety of work in Poplar, to show him all the kind of things that come under the heading of "family doctor". He has a fortnight to pass on the secret of how to be a generalist, how to deal with whatever comes in through the door, and to teach the young man how to give the impression of being the only doctor in Poplar.

Sister Julienne fusses a little when she realises they'll be dealing with a young and untrained doctor for two weeks. He's not really untrained though, just inexperienced in the work of general practice. Doctor Turner explains he has very good examination scores and the best possible references. Doctor Turner assures them that he's spoken with the young man, who seems terribly keen to impress. Besides, there'll be a thorough debriefing at the end of each day.

The rest of them at Nonnatus House think it will all – really – be fine. It's a running joke between the younger midwives that whenever the Turners go on holiday, Doctor Turner deliberately picks the most unbearable locums to make himself look better by comparison, and to remind them that, whatever his faults, he does have some virtues. But training - training he takes seriously.

Besides, it's only two weeks. No-one can do that much harm in two weeks.

"He can't kill many patients in a fortnight!" jokes Delia over dinner.

Sister Julienne does not look amused. She doesn't like disruption. Or jokes about manslaughter.

* * *

The initial reports aren't good. "Insufferable", pronounces Trixie. "Perfectly competent as a doctor, but full of himself. He kept going on about what a waste it was to fill out forms and how that should be left to nurses, while he got on with the business of doctoring. I made a quick exit before he asked me to do his paperwork for him."

Sister Julienne insists on having the young doctor – Doctor Burroughs – round for tea, against the advice of those who've met him. Trixie makes sure to be absent.

But before Trixie leaves, she warns Patsy and Barbara. "On no account – _no account_ – should you ask him about Oxford." She looks grave.

Doctor Burroughs breezes in. Breezes is the only word for it. He is in no way disconcerted by the building, the nuns, his own experience or the regiment of women which greets him.

He whistles when he sees Patsy. "Oh, a redhead! A feisty one, I'll bet. I'll have to watch myself."

Patsy tries to make a face which indicates that she is here only in body, not in spirit.

At the table, Doctor Burroughs shuffles his chair closer to Patsy. The place should be occupied by Delia. Patsy tries, rather grimly, not to think about the symbolism of that.

"What would you recommend?"

"It's all very good – Mrs B is very good." Patsy attempts the least feisty reply she can conceive.

"But what would _you_ recommend?"

Doctor Burroughs doesn't seem to grasp that Nonnatus House is a place of stolid fare, not delicacies or seasonal delights.

Talk turns to hobbies, which ought to be innocuous enough. Doctor Burroughs was, in his younger years ("not so long ago!"), a rower. He rolls up his sleeves – right there at the table – and invites Patsy to inspect the "biceps that won him a blue". Patsy tries to move her face almost not at all; she certainly doesn't touch. She bites her tongue and thinks that his arms and their rowing victories are really rather unimpressive – compared to what Delia's arms can do; compared to their versatility. (Which is a valid and appropriate comparison to make: as a nurse, she takes a professional interest in comparative human anatomy.)

Sister Julienne is all politeness. Sister Monica Joan is not. She asks to leave; when Sister Julienne refuses her permission, she remarks "from hour to hour, we rot and rot."

The Shakespearean quotation is apposite but dangerous. Doctor Burroughs recognises it: _As You Like It_.

This is all Doctor Burroughs needs to launch into a lecture for Sister Monica Joan. Well; he would probably consider it a thoroughly engaging discussion about Shakespeare with a kindred spirit. But, then again, "discussion" implies that both speakers in the conversation participate, which is not the case here. When he was at Oxford (Trixie was definitely right about that being a subject to avoid), he trod the boards, you know.

Patsy notes – despite herself – that there is some small, wicked enjoyment to be had out of the situation. Sister Monica Joan, who usually enjoys a certain conversational freedom in Nonnatus House, who is, to put it frankly, given carte blanche to insult and derail, is now trapped in a discursive hell of her own making.

Whatever veiled, cryptic insult Sister Monica Joan throws at him, Doctor Burroughs takes it for encouragement. When she is stonily silent, he assumes she is absorbed in his tales of student drama. Still Sister Julienne will not let her leave (perhaps Sister Julienne is taking some petty and decidedly unchristian pleasure in seeing the shoe on the other foot – of seeing Sister Monica Joan unable to impose her will on talk for once).

Sister Monica Joan – despite all her powers of ingenuity – cannot escape. She is, perhaps for the first time, bested, as he tells her all about a production of Twelfth Night (at Oxford, obviously), where he took the lead role of Orsino.

"I thought Viola was the lead role in Twelfth Night", says Sister Mary Cynthia quietly but assuredly: Doctor Burroughs appears not to hear her.

The downside of the situation, however, is that everyone else at the table must listen to Doctor Burroughs holding forth.

"It was all very amateur, you understand", he says, in a voice implying it was anything but amateur. "All good fun."

Sister Monica Joan is very, very bored. This isn't an inference on Patsy's part; Sister Monica Joan yawns at him – the only weapon left to her.

At this point, he turns, winks at Patsy, and whispers to her, "perhaps I'll treat you to a soliloquy sometime".

Patsy's heard most of them anyway: performed at school (which was not a badge of distinction - it was a requirement for each form at the end of the year).

The real appeal of Shakespeare, of course, was that all the boys were girls in disguise. There was something rather thrilling about that – girls with the freedom to strut and argue and command (and woo other girls, albeit from behind the safety of a codpiece). The disappointing bit was the ending where the world was set to rights, when the misrule was over and they end with a marriage, each man and woman neatly set together as the perfect (or imperfect) pair.

It is almost an eternity before Doctor Burroughs leaves. Before he does, they are treated to a brief synopsis of the Oxford University Dramatic Society's entire programme for what feels like the whole of the past decade. Including details of the places in which Doctor Burroughs saw fit to "trim and improve on" the original plays. He's still got the programme from Twelfth Night somewhere, in one of his trunks, can't remember where exactly (he can remember _exactly_ where, Patsy bets): he'll show it to Sister Monica Joan sometime.

When the door shuts behind him, Sister Monica Joan laments: "I met a fool in the forest, a motley fool."

But it's too late for her barb to carry its usual sting.

* * *

Delia, of course, finds the whole situation endlessly entertaining, having missed the exquisite awkwardness of it all, both the amateur dramatics and Doctor Burroughs' tactless winking.

"Should I be concerned about the competition?" she asks Patsy, later.

Well, she finds it hilarious for a few minutes, until Patsy's face clouds over.

"Was he really that awful?"

"Yes. Beastly."

"Oh, sweetheart. I'm sorry. I didn't meant to upset you."

What Delia is sorry for is a litany of things which are wholly and so far beyond her control as to be amusing.

For the record, tales of derring-do in rowing boats or critically-acclaimed student drama performances don't do much to win Patsy over (even had Doctor Burroughs been in with a chance to begin with). She can't be bowled into love with an oration.

When she first knew Delia – before they are what they are now to each other – Delia would bring her, just sometimes, just occasionally, little gifts. Small, considerate things - nothing ostentatious. That winter, when they'd first met, in a week when Patsy had confessed to feeling a little run down, it had been a brown paper bag containing four oranges (for the vitamin content). Later, at some other time, a postcard – not of any particular place, just a view she'd liked (had it been a view of St Paul's in the early morning mist?). Because Delia had thought Patsy might like it, and it was a fine-looking thing, and Patsy's room could be politely described as spartan. And some other, not so small things. One night, Patsy had traipsed back late, thoroughly miserable, because along with enduring the wretched consultant's comments, the sole of one shoe had come loose and she'd been hobbling round the ward for most of the day, and would be hobbling the next day too, until she could get it fixed at the weekend. Delia had asked to have a look, and slipped out very early the next morning, cajoled some cobbler into opening his shop and fixing it, and then returned the shoes – good as, or better than new – to Patsy before she had to begin work. When Patsy had thanked her, and offered to pay her back, Delia said it was nothing; she smiled and shrugged and changed the topic of conversation. As if these were just things you'd do for a friend, something Delia would have done for any of the other nurses in training. (Although Patsy and Delia both knew that wasn't true; although Patsy wasn't ready to admit that fact to anyone else, or possibly even herself – not just yet).

When Patsy kisses Delia, Delia doesn't launch into a dramatic monologue. She kisses back.

* * *

The day following the disastrous tea party/impromptu drama club, Nurse Crane and Patsy are in the Maternity Home. Doctor Burroughs has already angered Nurse Crane, by sending her into the small room at the back to fill out the forms which Doctor Turner himself would normally see to. Pointing out the fact that this is usually considered the doctor's responsibility does not change his stance. The forms are not long, but Nurse Crane objects on principle.

"As you'll see from my uniform, doctor, I'm a midwife, not a secretary", she insists.

"But I am the _doctor_ , Nurse. So if you would."

After three deliveries in quick succession, they arrive at a break in the births. Patsy and Doctor Burroughs go into the little back room where Nurse Crane is already sitting in the corner; forms filled, in a pile before her. She may despise Doctor Burroughs; she's still a wiz with paperwork. She's reading a medical journal, deep in concentration – or perhaps simply still in high dudgeon. There's an pot of tea brewing next to her: given what Patsy can guess about her mood (steaming, like the tea) it's probably best to wait until she's soothed by several cups before attempting to speak to her.

In the lull, Doctor Burroughs sees his chance.

What it looks like from his perspective is, probably, only a young doctor offering a winning smile to a pretty nurse. It's not pride or false modesty to say he's a good bet: well-mannered, well-dressed, well-heeled, come to that – a good catch. And he's about to suggest an evening any nice girl would jump at.

He's not exactly taking pity on her – but – why wouldn't a nurse be flattered by an evening out with a doctor? Isn't that what a lot of them aim at? (Isn't that why a lot of them go into nursing? To nab themselves a doctor? Otherwise, why not be a secretary: that would be less mucky, and they can dress up a bit more; and the hours are regular).

So he turns to Patsy, oblivious of Nurse Crane's presence, or otherwise not caring.

"I've two tickets for a dance tonight – shall I pick you up at seven, say?"

"I can't, I'm afraid – I've made plans." (Not true, not really – not plans worthy of the name. The plan being only to avoid Doctor Burroughs at any and all costs.)

"You could un-make your plans: I've already bought the tickets."

"I really can't." (And she wouldn't; a better evening involves spending an hour watching Delia complain as Patsy forces her to memorise the cycling proficiency handbook Patsy bought her. Delia complains; Patsy offers her incentives to continue; and so it goes. An intensive personal study group, you might call it.)

"Tomorrow then – I'm only here for a fortnight after all!" Some people, thinks Doctor Burroughs – some women – don't recognise a good thing when it's right in front of them, offering them an evening's entertainment.

"I'm on call for the rest of the week, we're short-staffed." (Again, untrue.) In an attempt to remain polite, she adds: "but if you're at a loss for company, Sister Julienne said you'd be welcome at Nonnatus House for dinner at any time." At the time, Patsy had questioned this open invitation, but now sees the strategic use of it.

"I was hoping for something rather more intimate."

Given Doctor Burroughs' great appreciation for the dramatic arts, his advances are not exactly poetic. They're just blunt and uncomfortable.

Patsy is skilled at turning down unwanted male attention. Even if her social habits since she came to Nonnatus haven't given her much practice at it – Doctor Turner and Fred don't really proposition anyone. The distinct advantage of the patients on male surgical (who could be lecherous at times) was that you could get away from their advances by walking away from the bed. Besides, given that you were the ones in charge of their bedpans and remembering to bring their pain relief on time, they didn't try it more than once.

"I really don't think that would be appropriate."

"Why? There's no need to be shy. You know - even in a _very pretty_ girl like you - coyness really is a crime, sometimes."

He's still smiling, but there's something rather irritated about his tone.

Patsy thinks about the time in school when she (entirely accidentally) broken another girl's nose when playing hockey – she'd raised the stick a little too high, and hadn't realised the reach of her own arms. It would, she reflects, be entirely easy to break another nose now, even without a hockey stick to hand – her arms still have a long reach. Instead, when Doctor Burroughs steps closer to her, she simply steps away (in fact, displaying a level of agility she rarely achieved on the hockey pitch).

"Absolutely not, Doctor Burroughs. I have no interest in spending an evening with you – not this evening or any other evening. I don't think I can make myself any clearer."

"I know we'd have a good time if you'd just give me a chance. Loosen up a little."

As if the whole thing weren't excruciatingly embarrassing enough, Patsy realises that Nurse Crane is still there, sitting silently at the table. It's not clear whether she's listening, or leafing through a back issue of the British Medical Journal.

Except, then it is clear that Nurse Crane is listening, when Nurse Crane stands up.

"Doctor Burroughs: what Nurse Mount is too polite to tell you is that she's spoken for. Fortunately, I hail from Leeds and have no such scruples when it comes to calling a spade a spade. Even if Nurse Mount were unattached, she would have to loosen her standards all the way to rock bottom to make you an acceptable candidate. Now, if you would kindly cease harassing my nurse, we'll leave."

Doctor Burroughs frowns.

"And one last thing – you can learn to do your own paperwork. I would have thought they'd taught you that at _Oxford_."

As Nurse Crane stands, she picks up the teapot, makes eye contact with Doctor Burroughs, and slowly pours the contents of the pot of hot tea onto the pile of completed paperwork.

As they leave, they can hear the tea running off the table and making a gentle plink-plink as it hits the floor.

* * *

Nurse Crane and Patsy walk back together. It's a fine day, no need for the car.

Nurse Crane strides like some great cosmic force for justice in the universe. Like Olympian Zeus, a god come down to step on the face of the Earth for a day.

Patsy doesn't ask Nurse Crane what she meant when she said Patsy was "spoken for". It was probably a convenient, combative, defensive lie on Nurse Crane's part; an attempt to close the conversation.

"I hate a man like that, Nurse Mount. The type that thinks midwifery is all bringing towels and holding hands and that skill and training doesn't come into it."

"Not exactly an attractive proposition", Patsy murmurs.

"Not if he were the last man on Earth. Besides, you can do much better than a failed actor."

* * *

When they get back, Patsy goes up to her room, lies on her bed and tries to forget the day. Which is difficult, given that she'll be back to work after lunch: more dodging of Doctor Burroughs.

She tries to steel herself. Because, really, you have to expect this sort of thing some of the time, if you elect to work in her chosen profession. There'll always be doctors like this: men who think their knowledge of human anatomy and university degree entitles them to take their pick among the nurses.

Delia would probably have been far more bellicose about it. Although whether even Delia would have gone as far as Nurse Crane – the wanton destruction (well, soaking, at least) of official NHS paperwork – is up for discussion.

She's been lying down for about ten minutes when there's knock on the door. It can't be Delia, who won't be back for another half hour or so (and probably not until Patsy's had to leave again). It's not Trixie – because Trixie doesn't knock on the door of her own room.

It's Nurse Crane, who enters abruptly and makes no mention to the earlier scene with the tea and the records.

"I've a favour to ask, Nurse Mount. I wonder if you wouldn't very much swapping shifts with me this afternoon. I'm meant to be finished now – but there's an interesting case on the Maternity Home books which I've been hoping to observe."

Patsy racks her brain to think of what this "interesting case" might be. But there's nothing down for later but ordinary pregnancies (as ordinary as they can be); no scheduled procedures or tests. She waits for Nurse Crane to specify what medical first will this afternoon be performed in an otherwise anonymous building in Poplar. But she doesn't. She proceeds in a most business-like manner, as if Patsy has already given her assent.

"So, that's settled then. And you can make it up to me at some other time." Nurse Crane gestures as if to suggest some time in the far-off future; it is an unsettling vagueness, not at all in keeping with Nurse Crane's usual pinpoint precision.

And then there's a change in tone. "Besides, I think Nurse Busby finishes at two?"

"At one."

"Take it from me, Nurse Mount: if Doctor Burroughs is really not your type, there's no shame in that. No shame at all. As I said, I think you can do - _have done_ \- much better."

(Is this a conversational leap or not? How to read that sudden meaningful _emphasis_ that Nurse Crane is now employing?)

"Thank you, Nurse Crane."

"Phyllis!" She reminds Patsy, before leaving.

* * *

 **A/N: Sorry for the not very subtle Andrew Marvell reference...inevitable after a week spent teaching the metaphysical poets.**

 **There is one more chapter to come. A kind of epilogue, I suppose - whether or not 18 fairly disparate chapters form enough of a unity to require an epilogue...**


	19. A Night of Romance

**Chapter 19. A Night of Romance and Stealth**

Nonnatus House is used to people moving about in the dark.

It is used to people moving about in the dark on official business, called out to attend a birth, because bodies don't work to regular schedules. It's also used to people moving about in the dark secretly, furtively. Because, even if nothing can be hidden from the Lord, who sees into all corners and all hearts (as Sister Julienne might say), it's one thing to be willing to endure divine censure, and quite another thing to risk the censure of Sister Julienne. A rare case of earthly consequences being more terrifying than heavenly ones. So people, in the dark, move with as much stealth as they can muster. But the House seems amenable to that. People say "if these walls could talk", but, if these could - then they wouldn't. They'd keep a seal on what they see - not out of disapproval, but out of solidarity.

The buttons on Delia's cardigan are all off by one. That's what happens when you scramble to dress in the near-dark. She's so groggy she hasn't yet noticed.

"I can't believe you got me up for this", Delia half-heartedly protests to Patsy in a whisper.

"As I recall, it was your idea."

"You're the one who said it would be 'terribly romantic' when I suggested it!"

"Yes, and now I realise that 'terrible' described the process of getting you out of bed. Now, come on, the radio said we only had half an hour."

"You're a tyrant, you know."

Delia pretends to be grumpy, but isn't really putting up much resistance. Even in the almost-darkness, Patsy makes a very attractive tyrant.

This is, according to the radio, a once in a lifetime experience. More than once-in-a-lifetime: the earth, hurtling through the cosmos, passes through this shower of meteorites only once every four centuries. Tonight - or rather, in the small hours of this May morning - they will be visible in Poplar. The last time they were above the Earth, the meteors were looking down on the Italian Renaissance, Galileo waving back. And now it's Poplar.

Galileo probably had the wisdom to nap during the day, if he knew he'd be doing astronomical observations at two in the morning, though, thinks Delia. Galileo didn't have shifts to work. Lucky Galileo.

Galileo, probably, also hadn't had to spend all his evening before an astronomical observation helping Sister Julienne go through the archives of the order. Galileo, whose mind and eyes were sharp, probably had arms too weak to lift record boxes out of the attic (in fact, not so much boxes as crates: call it a filing system and Nurse Crane would have had a fit).

Sister Julienne had been contacted by an American businessman, born in Poplar some fifty years before. He'd made good in America - made his name in chewing gum - and was now tracing his birth records and details about the auspicious day of his nativity (let chewing gum manufacturers across the world rejoice!). He'd spoken on the phone with Sister Julienne - well, his secretary had. He'd offered make it worth the order's time - a phrase which was probably intended to be gracious, but when repeated sounded oddly threatening.

Delia wasn't entirely sure why they were doing it. The man had a birth certificate, didn't he? His secretary had said he wanted "local colour" for his family tree. If he wanted local colour, let him come over and do the looking for himself. Probably he preferred the colours of the twee image of Olde World Poplar he'd cooked up in his head - where everyone knew everyone, went for a knees up at the local, and sang along while the landlord played the harmonica. That sounded distinctly preferable to the "local colour" of the real Poplar and its slum housing and inadequate wages and infectious diseases.

Besides, the records of the order weren't exactly colourful - just very dusty. All the chewing gum in the world wouldn't be enough compensation (besides -Delia didn't like the stuff; in her experience, always the most obnoxious patients on male surgical who were chewing away, thinking it gave them a streetwise look. It didn't; it just made them look like they were in for dislocated jaws as well as their other operations).

Sister Julienne had gone about it quite calmly, but Delia had ended up so dusty that she'd had to shower afterwards. She still felt like some of the dust had lodged in her throat and was coating her oesophagus.

* * *

Furtively, and fairly quietly, they navigate the stairs; they stop in the kitchen for a glass of water. (The cold of it down her throat might wake her up, or at least wash down the lingering dust.)

As she runs the tap, Patsy attempts to fix Delia's buttons for her. Or she steps towards her, intending to do so... and quite loses her chain of thought. It was a romantic idea, after all - Delia noted, before focusing her attentions elsewhere. For a moment - quite a long moment - all thoughts of astronomy are forgotten.

"Am I interrupting something?"

Trixie steps into the kitchen, wiggling her eyebrows, arms crossed across her chest.

Delia's cardigan is halfway down her shoulders, now in want of more adjustment than it was before.

"We're up to watch the meteor shower"

"In here?"

"Outside. We were... distracted, delayed, by a problem with the tap." Delia taps the tap for emphasis.

"You should join us - if you've got the energy?" Patsy suggests.

"I wouldn't want to intrude."

"You wouldn't be intruding, we're only going to stand on the steps and look up. Besides, you're awake anyway - and it's meant to be once in a lifetime."

"I suppose I could make a wish upon a shooting star that I never have a delivery like that again. Not just the new grandmother in the room, but the four aunts - all insisting on being right there, next to the bed. And as soon as I shooed one out, another would sneak back in - I had to threaten to barricade the door in the end."

"Come on then, sounds like you could do with wishing on several shooting stars."

The three of them go outside together.

The night is breezy: Patsy, practically-minded, carries a blanket (which is good - even when Delia's cardigan is properly buttoned-up, it's not much protection from the chill of the spring night air).

They almost trip over Sister Monica Joan, sitting on one of the top steps.

She was obviously going to be here. Celestial phenomena are her specialty.

(Delia's original romantic ideas are, clearly, not so original.)

Sister Monica Joan is wrapped up in a coat. She's also set down a small plate of assorted biscuits with beside her (well, not so small, piled quite high), as a sort of midnight picnic. She's also brought the cat with her. By day the cat may belong to Sister Winifred - at least as much as a cat belongs to anyone - but by night, it is Sister Monica Joan's creature. Hence the two names: by day, _Ramon_ (by putting it into Spanish, Sister Winifred considers it sufficiently removed from 'Raymond' as to remove any taint of impropriety); but by night, Sister Monica Joan has her way, and calls him Greymalkin, as a proper witch's familiar should be titled. The arrangement causes little bother, because there aren't regularly many people around at night to call his name or to hear it being called.

While she waits for the celestially-appointed hour, Sister Monica Joan is trying to persuade the cat to eat a fig roll. (This is a wise move on Sister Monica Joan's part, as she knows that no new biscuits will be purchased until the current assortment, including the fig rolls, are gone. And who likes fig rolls? Why put them in a Family Teatime Assortment at all?)

Unfortunately, the cat seems to be rejecting the fig rolls. Sister Monica Joan seems in two minds about this. On one hand, the fig rolls do, desperately, need to be disposed of - before they spoil another teatime with their presence. On the other, that Greymalkin is rejecting the fig rolls is a sign of his impeccable good taste.

Even Delia - who prefers dogs, really - recognises that there's some dignity in a cat which refuses a fig roll.

They drape the blanket over all three of them - Patsy, Delia and Trixie.

Miraculously - and really, it is a miracle - the smog that had hung in the atmosphere has been shifted by the breeze. And, quite suddenly, they can see them. The sky all illumined.

* * *

Ten minutes later, Sister Mary Cynthia comes out, holding a cup of tea in her hands. She'd had the same idea.

(Delia's romantic ideas are not original at all, not at all.)

The step is getting crowded.

But it is romantic. Inescapably. Though Delia might want to be cynical about it. Patsy is holding Delia's hand under one of the folds of the blanket.

And as much as she'd happily be here alone with Patsy, it's just as good to be here with the rest of them, too. To watch Sister Mary Cynthia sipping her tea and offering some to Sister Monica Joan; to listen to Trixie and Sister Mary Cynthia reminisce about the time that Jenny shouted at Fred for a full fifteen minutes when he suggested that women's moods were ruled by the lunar cycle. It doesn't sound like Fred ever fully recovered from that confrontation. It is good just to sit, to talk, and to listen, without artifice or awkwardness or agenda. Delia listens to a conversation which moves around things which happened before she came here, and things which she herself remembers. She's never met Jenny, but she thinks if she did, she would have liked her. She still feels present. So, in the same way, does Sister Evangelina. As if, for this one night, time was folded in on itself, like the pleats of an accordion.

Delia attributes these flights of fancy to delirium from lack of sleep.

Greymalkin leaps from Sister Monica Joan's lap and prowls round the corner, no doubt going in search of some more appetising or challenging prey than fig rolls.

In principle, what they're doing out here should make Delia feel very small, insignificant - being reminded of the vastness of the universe and the great expanse of time and the smallness of their own lives. But somehow it doesn't. Somehow it's moving.

Delia whispers in Patsy's ear, "I'm quite glad you woke me up, after all."

"Worth the effort" - Patsy squeezes her hand back. And then, even lower and quieter, "terribly romantic."

She's right: even if it's just the same dark sky hanging over Poplar, no melodious birds singing madrigals to be heard in the air, it is a romantic night. For a moment, they're all swept up in the stillness of it.

Then, loudly, there's a surprised "oh!" from around the corner. Followed by a more confused, "How did he get here? We should take him back inside."

Barbara comes round the corner, cradling Greymalkin in her arms. Greymalkin squrims, not enjoying the cradling.

Barbara is followed by Tom, whose collar is distinctly higgledy-piggledy.

(Now, Delia doesn't mind that her romantic ideas are unoriginal. She does mind sharing them with Tom. She should at least be able to come up with something better and more heart-stoppingly thrilling than Tom, who thinks a cricket match is an acceptable date. Tom has never swept anyone off their feet, unless he was physically picking them up and carrying them to safety as part of some sort of fire drill.)

"We were waiting for the meteor shower." Barbara gestures upwards, redundantly.

She blushes, and it's not so dark that the night hides it.

Trixie notes to herself that Barbara's poker-face is far worse than Delia's or Patsy's.

For a moment, they all pause, as if waiting for Nurse Crane or Sister Julienne or Sister Winifred to appear from out of the shadows to join them too. But of course none of them does - that would be an improbable fiction.

And then they look back up.

* * *

 **So, that's it. Thank you for reading and reviewing, and for all thoughts, comments and suggestions. Deeply appreciated.**

 **The reason for ending it here (it's not just that I've run out of ideas, nope, definitely not), is that it's all, or most, of the inhabitants of NH together, as an ensemble - which for me has always rather been the point of the show. This few, this happy few, etc. By that same token, it's a deliberately inconclusive conclusion. Patsy and Delia can't ride off into the sunset together waving a rainbow flag, but nor is it beyond the realms of historical or dramatic plausibility that they can just - you know - be quietly happy together. (If you think it _is_ beyond the realms of plausibility, then: a) you're wrong, and b) the author's not dead yet, and I am taking charge of this narrative, and I insist).**

 **You'll also notice, if you look very carefully, that in a reversal of what CTM likes to give us, the yawnsome heterosexual drama (i.e. Tom/Barbara) has been deliberately kept "off-screen". Cuts have to be made somewhere, sorry (not sorry).**

 **Finally, I'm pondering what (if anything) to do next. Suggestions welcome...**


End file.
